Misc WEP and WPA-Pre Shared?

[War]

Well, this is my problem. My mom knows NOTHING about wireless connections, so she got a friend of hers to come over and set up our wifi router. The problem is, he set it up as a WEP Pre-Shared. It works excellent for her laptop and all, but the DS doesn't support it. :\ So every time I want to go on wifi on my DS, I have to dig through the router settings, change it to WEP, and then change it back before my mom gets home from work. (which is tedious, and it sucks)

So my question is... what are the differences? I was planning on secretly changing it to WEP and trying to get it set up on my moms laptop (because when I switch it from WPA Pre Shared to WEP, it doesnt work on my moms computer anymore...probably because WPA has a password or something?) Are there any speed differences between the two? Which one is safer?

Thanks for the help!

 

[Samutz]

WPA is more secure.
Speed is the same.

 

[War]

Hmm...so if I change it to WEP for good, will people be able to steal my interwebz? I have it passworded and everything.

 

[Samutz]

They'll only be able to if they actually try to crack your WEP, which is easier than cracking WPA.

If you're really worried about it, you can leave in on WPA and buy a USB Wifi dongle thingy and use that to get the DS online instead.

 

[enigmaindex]

They'll only be able to if they actually try to crack your WEP, which is easier than cracking WPA.

If you're really worried about it, you can leave in on WPA and buy a USB Wifi dongle thingy and use that to get the DS online instead.

It is still possible to crack both but just easier cracking WEP (i tried cracking our neighbors WEP key and it worked haha it was out of curiosity to see if it was easy.) Our router is on WEP but doesn't reach my room, so i bought a Nintendo Wi-Fi USB and just hacked it with the tutorials found on the intarweb and now its an Access Point and everything works on it including homebrew. I suggest you do the same but then again its you decision.

 

[iritegood]

Having WEP is like having no protection. It took me about 5 minutes to crack. It's equivalent to not broadcasting your SSID or MAC address filtering, it keeps the non-computer literate out, but anyone wanting to crack into your network can easily do it.

 

[pasc]

Not true ! It's not like everyone is only interested in stealing others peoples wifi. Emergency or other stuff aside.

 

[adgloride]

You could have it on WEP and turn on mac filtering. This makes the connection a little more secure as it only lets certain machines connect. My router is on WPA, not broadcasting the SSID and has mac filtering enabled. The DS doesn't seem to pick up my router if I have it on WEP with the SSID disabled, I have to have it enabled. To keep my router on WPA, I just use the nintendo dongle.

 

[iritegood]

You could have it on WEP and turn on mac filtering. This makes the connection a little more secure as it only lets certain machines connect. My router is on WPA, not broadcasting the SSID and has mac filtering enabled. The DS doesn't seem to pick up my router if I have it on WEP with the SSID disabled, I have to have it enabled. To keep my router on WPA, I just use the nintendo dongle.

MAC filtering is useless, because it's so easy to spoof it's not even funny. You use netstumbler to sniff a few packets, you copy the MAC address, you use MACshift bada bing, bada boom you're in. And it's such a pain in the ass to set up. Say your friend comes over.

Friend: Hey, can I use the internet on my laptop for a bit.
You: Sure, let me just type out my password. Oops, forgot to add your MAC address. OK I'll just go look for it.... oh here it is! OK, let me just boot up my computer and access the router.
*5 Minutes later*
Arighty. I'm adding your MAC address. OK.
Now I just need to type in the password...
MMkay...
Alright! You're in!
Y: Hello? Are you awake?
F: zzzzzzzzzzzz

Not broadcasting your SSID is also useless. I forgot if it was kismet or netstumbler but I was able to detect my wirless network, even with SSID broadcasting disabled.

If you're worried about getting your network cracked the best way is just to set your encryption to WPA.
However, if you're not very worried and just want to keep your neighbor's kids off the network, just set it to WEP. Most people won't bother cracking in if there's a password, especially if you have a neighbor with an unencrypted network.