1 00:00:04,100 --> 00:00:10,480 Hello and welcome to this video titled a recap of Wi-Fi security fundamentals. 2 00:00:10,480 --> 00:00:14,320 So before we jump into this course, I just want to do a really quick, 3 00:00:14,320 --> 00:00:19,180 very high level overview or recap of stuff that hopefully you already 4 00:00:19,180 --> 00:00:21,800 have learned from my previous course. 5 00:00:21,800 --> 00:00:24,960 So if you haven't already seen it, I would highly recommend that you pause 6 00:00:24,960 --> 00:00:29,880 this course and go back to my jumping into Wi-Fi security course and watch 7 00:00:29,880 --> 00:00:31,940 that all the way through. 8 00:00:31,940 --> 00:00:36,480 So in that course, you'll learn about things like why Wi-Fi needs security 9 00:00:36,480 --> 00:00:41,100 in the first place, you know, what are the differences between confidentiality, 10 00:00:41,100 --> 00:00:45,160 authentication and data integrity, and what are some of the main differences 11 00:00:45,160 --> 00:00:49,980 between WPA, Wi-Fi protected access, and WPA2. 12 00:00:49,980 --> 00:00:54,800 And then lastly, that course also sort of demonstrates how to create a 13 00:00:54,800 --> 00:00:59,540 wireless LAN with WPA2 authentication on both an access point and a controller. 14 00:00:59,540 --> 00:01:04,100 So if you don't already have some familiarity, some experience with those 15 00:01:04,100 --> 00:01:07,940 basic concepts, I would definitely recommend that you watch that course 16 00:01:07,940 --> 00:01:10,860 first and then proceed into this one. 17 00:01:10,860 --> 00:01:15,260 Okay, so assuming that you have that as a background already, let's just 18 00:01:15,260 --> 00:01:19,700 review real quickly here, sort of the evolution that Wi-Fi protocols went 19 00:01:19,700 --> 00:01:23,500 through. So when Wi-Fi was first developed, okay, first of all, it wasn't 20 00:01:23,500 --> 00:01:25,080 even called Wi-Fi. 21 00:01:25,080 --> 00:01:28,720 That was a term or a marketing term that came much later. 22 00:01:28,720 --> 00:01:34,400 So Wi-Fi was, I'll say wireless networking, wireless LANs, were first 23 00:01:34,400 --> 00:01:39,820 developed by the IEEE 802.11 committee, and it was around 1997 when that 24 00:01:39,820 --> 00:01:44,520 was developed. And so when the 802.11 committee came up with this concept 25 00:01:44,520 --> 00:01:49,120 of wireless LANs, at the very beginning, it had this concept of using 26 00:01:49,120 --> 00:01:54,860 authentication and encryption using WEP, which was called Wired Equivalent 27 00:01:54,860 --> 00:01:59,100 Privacy. You can see here the date it was introduced, a little bit about 28 00:01:59,100 --> 00:02:00,980 the cipher and keys. 29 00:02:00,980 --> 00:02:05,600 And look at that last bullet point there, broken due to IV reuse. 30 00:02:05,600 --> 00:02:07,720 That was called the initialization vector. 31 00:02:07,720 --> 00:02:11,260 Not going to go into any details of that, but it was quickly discovered 32 00:02:11,260 --> 00:02:16,860 after not too many years, maybe just like two or three years after this 33 00:02:16,860 --> 00:02:21,080 was introduced, that with very little effort, people could crack into 34 00:02:21,080 --> 00:02:24,920 WEP, and then they could actually get on the wireless LAN and even worse, 35 00:02:24,920 --> 00:02:28,420 they could see your encrypted data that was going across the wireless 36 00:02:28,420 --> 00:02:32,760 LAN. So the IEEE said, okay, we have to kind of go back to the drawing 37 00:02:32,760 --> 00:02:35,980 board here and come up with something better because this isn't going 38 00:02:35,980 --> 00:02:39,540 to work. And so they said, well, if we're going to go back to the drawing 39 00:02:39,540 --> 00:02:42,060 board, there's a lot of things we could really do here. 40 00:02:42,060 --> 00:02:46,000 We could really work on all the confidentiality aspects of it. 41 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:48,180 How are we going to do data encryption? 42 00:02:48,180 --> 00:02:51,520 How are we going to implement some new algorithms to do that? 43 00:02:51,520 --> 00:02:54,120 Data integrity? How are we going to make sure that data hasn't been changed 44 00:02:54,120 --> 00:02:57,740 in transit? What are a bunch of authentication mechanisms and a whole 45 00:02:57,740 --> 00:02:58,840 bunch of other stuff? 46 00:02:58,840 --> 00:03:03,460 So they said, let's just think about wireless security as a whole. 47 00:03:03,460 --> 00:03:07,180 And since we've got this opportunity to update things, let's sort of take 48 00:03:07,180 --> 00:03:10,720 our time and update things so that when we're finally done and we have 49 00:03:10,720 --> 00:03:16,080 a new ratified amendment that we can say this is comprehensive. 50 00:03:16,080 --> 00:03:21,060 This not only fixes WEP's problems, but also introduces a whole bunch 51 00:03:21,060 --> 00:03:23,480 of new things that we didn't even have before. 52 00:03:23,480 --> 00:03:27,120 So the committee that they got together to do that was called the 802 53 00:03:27,120 --> 00:03:33,700 .11i committee. So the 802.11i amendment was this comprehensive amendment 54 00:03:33,700 --> 00:03:36,760 to do security. But here's the problem. 55 00:03:36,760 --> 00:03:41,260 Pretty much people knew in advance that this is going to be a multi-year 56 00:03:41,260 --> 00:03:45,540 effort. It was going to take a long time for 802.11i to finally be ratified 57 00:03:45,540 --> 00:03:47,720 for everything to be worked out. 58 00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:49,940 And there was a lot of invention that was going to have to take place 59 00:03:49,940 --> 00:03:53,740 as well. They didn't have all the protocols and all the features and standards 60 00:03:53,740 --> 00:03:57,440 already working when they started with 802.11i. 61 00:03:57,440 --> 00:04:01,660 There were some things, some technologies that already existed that they 62 00:04:01,660 --> 00:04:03,880 thought, hey, we can leverage this. 63 00:04:03,880 --> 00:04:05,780 But then there were other things that said, you know, we need to invent 64 00:04:05,780 --> 00:04:09,100 some stuff from scratch because there's not really any existing solution 65 00:04:09,100 --> 00:04:14,120 right now. But here was the problem is that there was multiple problems. 66 00:04:14,120 --> 00:04:19,620 Number one, before they even started with 802.11i, even though there were 67 00:04:19,620 --> 00:04:26,220 these standards out like 802.11b and 802.11g, not every manufacturer who 68 00:04:26,220 --> 00:04:30,400 implemented this stuff into their access points and clients was fully 69 00:04:30,400 --> 00:04:32,820 interoperable with other manufacturers. 70 00:04:32,820 --> 00:04:38,740 There was a lot of situations in back in the late 1990s, like 1999, 2000, 71 00:04:38,740 --> 00:04:44,360 when you might have a wireless access point that might work with one nitcard 72 00:04:44,360 --> 00:04:49,340 on your laptop, but not work with another nitcard on a different laptop 73 00:04:49,340 --> 00:04:51,740 or your PC might not be able to connect this. 74 00:04:51,740 --> 00:04:55,740 So there was all sorts of interoperability problems where manufacturers 75 00:04:55,740 --> 00:05:00,640 might just be implementing part of the standard and not all of it. 76 00:05:00,640 --> 00:05:04,920 So an organization, so several companies got together and they said, look, 77 00:05:04,920 --> 00:05:08,880 we need to figure out some way of standardizing this of certifying this 78 00:05:08,880 --> 00:05:17,780 so that people can have trust in Wi -Fi whether it be a Windows client 79 00:05:17,780 --> 00:05:20,900 or a Apple client or whatever, that they will work. 80 00:05:20,900 --> 00:05:22,700 They'll be able to connect wirelessly. 81 00:05:22,700 --> 00:05:27,740 We need to be able to have a bunch of a neutral organization that's formed 82 00:05:27,740 --> 00:05:30,320 that can test equipment. 83 00:05:30,320 --> 00:05:34,040 So when equipment comes out, the manufacturers can send us some examples 84 00:05:34,040 --> 00:05:37,760 of their newest access points, their newest nitcards, whatever. 85 00:05:37,760 --> 00:05:40,280 And in the lab environment, we can test all this stuff and then we can 86 00:05:40,280 --> 00:05:43,680 say, yes, this stuff works according to the standard. 87 00:05:43,680 --> 00:05:44,920 It's interoperable. 88 00:05:44,920 --> 00:05:46,320 It works together. 89 00:05:46,320 --> 00:05:50,560 So in 1999, the Wi-Fi Alliance was formed. 90 00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:53,300 Now, the Wi-Fi Alliance actually didn't go by that name back then. 91 00:05:53,300 --> 00:05:56,280 You'll never be tested on this, but originally it was called the Wireless 92 00:05:56,280 --> 00:06:01,820 Ethernet compatibility Alliance, WECA, the Wireless Ethernet compatibility 93 00:06:01,820 --> 00:06:06,520 Alliance. And then a couple of years later in 2002, they changed their 94 00:06:06,520 --> 00:06:07,900 name to the Wi-Fi Alliance. 95 00:06:07,900 --> 00:06:13,020 But that was the goal of the Wi-Fi Alliance was to take different equipment 96 00:06:13,020 --> 00:06:16,780 from different manufacturers and run it through a rigorous testing and 97 00:06:16,780 --> 00:06:18,380 certification process. 98 00:06:18,380 --> 00:06:22,660 So ultimately, if they stuck their Wi -Fi Alliance sticker on there, you 99 00:06:22,660 --> 00:06:25,660 would know that that piece of equipment was trustworthy. 100 00:06:25,660 --> 00:06:29,400 It had gone through tests and it would be interoperable with other equipment 101 00:06:29,400 --> 00:06:32,820 that also had the Wi-Fi Alliance sticker on it. 102 00:06:32,820 --> 00:06:36,620 Okay. So here we are with the Wi-Fi Alliance and now the Wi-Fi Alliance 103 00:06:36,620 --> 00:06:41,240 is aware, as is everybody else, that WEP is broken. 104 00:06:41,240 --> 00:06:46,120 And then they find out that the IEEE is forming this 802.11i committee 105 00:06:46,120 --> 00:06:51,660 to fix this. And they also know, because they've got people actually on 106 00:06:51,660 --> 00:06:54,560 this committee, you know, the Wi-Fi Alliance was composed of people like 107 00:06:54,560 --> 00:06:58,400 Cisco and lots of other vendors as well that contributed to this Wi-Fi 108 00:06:58,400 --> 00:07:03,900 Alliance. They also knew that within this 802.11i committee, there were 109 00:07:03,900 --> 00:07:08,200 already pretty much fully mature that they are going to incorporate into 110 00:07:08,200 --> 00:07:12,600 802.11i. And there were other technologies either hadn't been invented 111 00:07:12,600 --> 00:07:16,320 yet, or were sort of in the process of being invented, but they weren't 112 00:07:16,320 --> 00:07:18,040 really mature yet. 113 00:07:18,040 --> 00:07:23,900 So the Wi-Fi Alliance said, hey, we can't really wait around for 802.11i 114 00:07:23,900 --> 00:07:26,580 to be fully ratified and finished. 115 00:07:26,580 --> 00:07:28,320 That could be many years. 116 00:07:28,320 --> 00:07:33,500 Right now there is a burning critical need for security to be fixed in 117 00:07:33,500 --> 00:07:35,100 wireless devices. 118 00:07:35,100 --> 00:07:36,860 Otherwise, people aren't going to trust wireless. 119 00:07:36,860 --> 00:07:39,720 They're just going to sort of ignore it and toss it to the side. 120 00:07:39,720 --> 00:07:41,560 So they said, well, let's do this. 121 00:07:41,560 --> 00:07:46,540 Let's come up with our own certification based on what we know that's 122 00:07:46,540 --> 00:07:52,920 currently in the draft form of the 802.11i documentation. 123 00:07:52,920 --> 00:07:56,920 And within that draft form, the pieces of it that we know are pretty mature, 124 00:07:56,920 --> 00:08:03,600 that we can safely assume will still be there in that form when the 802 125 00:08:03,600 --> 00:08:07,760 .11i is finally finished years from now. 126 00:08:07,760 --> 00:08:11,640 And so they came up with a certification called Wi-Fi protected access 127 00:08:11,640 --> 00:08:15,420 WPA. And that was the original version of WPA. 128 00:08:15,420 --> 00:08:22,760 So in 2003, they said, well, we know that the 802.11i document is not 129 00:08:22,760 --> 00:08:24,060 standardized yet. 130 00:08:24,060 --> 00:08:27,420 Is including things like T-kip with RC four. 131 00:08:27,420 --> 00:08:31,260 It's now talking about how Wi-Fi we're calling it why that's what the 132 00:08:31,260 --> 00:08:32,540 Wi-Fi Alliance gave it. 133 00:08:32,540 --> 00:08:33,780 They call it the name Wi-Fi. 134 00:08:33,780 --> 00:08:34,880 They're the ones who came up with that. 135 00:08:34,880 --> 00:08:38,180 They say, we know this going to be implemented as either a personal or 136 00:08:38,180 --> 00:08:39,460 an enterprise version. 137 00:08:39,460 --> 00:08:42,420 We're going to do a review of that in just one slide in just a second. 138 00:08:42,420 --> 00:08:48,120 So we will include that in our WPA certification. 139 00:08:48,120 --> 00:08:50,580 There's other stuff in there that's not fully mature yet. 140 00:08:50,580 --> 00:08:53,380 Other stuff in there that's just on paper that no one's even invented 141 00:08:53,380 --> 00:08:55,560 yet. We're not going to include that. 142 00:08:55,560 --> 00:08:58,720 We'll just include the mature technologies. 143 00:08:58,720 --> 00:09:00,880 And so the WPA certification came out. 144 00:09:00,880 --> 00:09:07,440 And one of the goals of WPA was not only to certify that vendors could 145 00:09:07,440 --> 00:09:12,080 now start implementing these mature technologies into their access points 146 00:09:12,080 --> 00:09:15,820 and knit cars and have a much stronger form of security. 147 00:09:15,820 --> 00:09:19,300 But they wanted to make sure that people could do so in a way that did 148 00:09:19,300 --> 00:09:22,500 not require a hardware upgrade. 149 00:09:22,500 --> 00:09:26,260 In other words, if you had an old Wi -Fi knit card or an old Wi-Fi access 150 00:09:26,260 --> 00:09:30,340 point that was only doing web right now, there was a simple software upgrade 151 00:09:30,340 --> 00:09:36,520 you could get to the things in WPA and get your enhanced security. 152 00:09:36,520 --> 00:09:40,740 So that was the main goal of Wi-Fi protected access. 153 00:09:40,740 --> 00:09:45,160 Notice it was a new Wi-Fi. 154 00:09:45,160 --> 00:09:47,060 Now here we are in late 2025. 155 00:09:47,060 --> 00:09:51,420 As you can see here, this has been deprecated by the Wi-Fi alliance. 156 00:09:51,420 --> 00:09:55,640 So really, you should not have even if you have devices that support it, 157 00:09:55,640 --> 00:09:58,900 you should not implement WPA anymore. 158 00:09:58,900 --> 00:10:03,620 It's not it's stronger than WIP, but a lot weaker than much of the modern 159 00:10:03,620 --> 00:10:04,760 stuff that's come out. 160 00:10:04,760 --> 00:10:06,580 So what is the modern stuff that's come out? 161 00:10:06,580 --> 00:10:15,540 Well, in 2004, the 802.11i was finally finished and holy moly, all of 162 00:10:15,540 --> 00:10:18,220 a sudden it's like, oh, wow, there's a bunch of stuff in here that we 163 00:10:18,220 --> 00:10:20,140 didn't have in WPA. 164 00:10:20,140 --> 00:10:25,660 Not only that, the basic security mechanisms of encryption is much stronger. 165 00:10:25,660 --> 00:10:30,940 Oh, look, they're using AES CCMP, which stands for advanced encryption 166 00:10:30,940 --> 00:10:35,360 standard in case you're curious, which is so much better than T-kip with 167 00:10:35,360 --> 00:10:41,180 RC4. So they suddenly realized that while WPA was better than WIP, then 168 00:10:41,180 --> 00:10:47,740 the actual standard of 802.11i now that was finished was much, much stronger, 169 00:10:47,740 --> 00:10:53,020 much, much better than what they had been previously certifying with WPA. 170 00:10:53,020 --> 00:10:56,980 So they had to upgrade their WPA certification and they did that called 171 00:10:56,980 --> 00:11:08,740 WPA2. Now, notice that was in 2004. 172 00:11:08,740 --> 00:11:13,980 WPA2 is pretty much the de facto standard in most devices. 173 00:11:13,980 --> 00:11:16,940 Certainly, if you're talking about like Internet of Things devices like 174 00:11:16,940 --> 00:11:22,720 video cameras, Wi-Fi enabled appliances, Wi-Fi thermostats, almost certainly 175 00:11:22,720 --> 00:11:25,380 they're going to be using WPA2. 176 00:11:25,380 --> 00:11:41,400 Okay. Now, finally, in 2018, they came up with WPA2 much stronger in certain 177 00:11:41,400 --> 00:11:47,020 areas and a lot of new features that WPA2 couldn't even conceive of in 178 00:11:47,020 --> 00:11:51,080 the time. So technically speaking, even though it came out in 2018, which 179 00:11:51,080 --> 00:11:55,600 is still seven, almost eight years ago at this point, if I'm doing my 180 00:11:55,600 --> 00:11:59,640 math right, WPA2 is still the de facto standard. 181 00:11:59,640 --> 00:12:05,060 Ideally, everybody would be using WPA3 in everything that they do with 182 00:12:05,060 --> 00:12:08,960 Wi-Fi. So if you have a choice, if you're in control of the access point 183 00:12:08,960 --> 00:12:13,460 at your home and the Wi-Fi knit cars on your laptop and your tablets, 184 00:12:13,460 --> 00:12:16,040 do WPA3 if they support it. 185 00:12:16,040 --> 00:12:17,720 They probably will. 186 00:12:17,720 --> 00:12:20,820 It's really only going to be those Internet of Things devices that might 187 00:12:20,820 --> 00:12:23,960 have a problem with WPA3. 188 00:12:23,960 --> 00:12:28,020 Okay. So just to finish off our review here, you know, once again, when 189 00:12:28,020 --> 00:12:31,860 WPA came out, the original WPA, they said, well, according to this draft 190 00:12:31,860 --> 00:12:36,980 we have of 802.11i that's not finished yet, that Wi-Fi is going to be 191 00:12:36,980 --> 00:12:40,360 implemented, I should say wireless networking is going to be implemented 192 00:12:40,360 --> 00:12:44,620 in two ways. One of those ways is called personal. 193 00:12:44,620 --> 00:12:49,220 And so we'll call that WPA personal, which is meant for like small offices, 194 00:12:49,220 --> 00:12:51,840 home offices, medium-sized businesses. 195 00:12:51,840 --> 00:12:56,800 But basically, it involves, you know, the access point having a password, 196 00:12:56,800 --> 00:12:59,040 we call that a pre-shared key. 197 00:12:59,040 --> 00:13:07,720 And then on your client, you the wireless LAN, that is personal. 198 00:13:07,720 --> 00:13:12,420 But for larger enterprises or maybe companies are really super security 199 00:13:12,420 --> 00:13:17,660 conscious like the Wi-Fi at the CIA or the NSA or, you know, MI5 in Britain 200 00:13:17,660 --> 00:13:21,640 or something like that, they're going to need much, much stronger security 201 00:13:21,640 --> 00:13:24,080 than personal allows. 202 00:13:24,080 --> 00:13:27,820 And so there's another form of WPA called enterprise that you can use 203 00:13:27,820 --> 00:13:32,900 for that. With WPA enterprise, that involves offloading the authentication 204 00:13:32,900 --> 00:13:38,120 piece of it to an external server called an authentication server and 205 00:13:38,120 --> 00:13:43,380 using a protocol called 802.1x as well as a sub protocol called EAP to 206 00:13:43,380 --> 00:13:48,420 exchange the credentials between the Wi -Fi client, which is called a supplicant 207 00:13:48,420 --> 00:13:51,240 and the authentication server. 208 00:13:51,240 --> 00:13:54,540 And the Wi-Fi access point in the middle is just sort of passing that 209 00:13:54,540 --> 00:13:56,320 stuff back and forth. 210 00:13:56,320 --> 00:14:00,960 So with what with WPA enterprise, you've got a greater variety of much, 211 00:14:00,960 --> 00:14:06,440 much stronger encryption and integrity and authentication algorithms available 212 00:14:06,440 --> 00:14:09,460 to you than you do in personal mode. 213 00:14:09,460 --> 00:14:14,340 Now, this particular course is going to be pretty much almost exclusively 214 00:14:14,340 --> 00:14:19,040 focused on WPA three and in the personal edition. 215 00:14:19,040 --> 00:14:21,080 Okay, so that's what we're going to be focusing on. 216 00:14:21,080 --> 00:14:24,800 So lest you be concerned with, oh man, I feel like I'm missing a whole 217 00:14:24,800 --> 00:14:27,820 bunch of stuff with with WPA enterprise. 218 00:14:27,820 --> 00:14:29,500 Let me just say this. 219 00:14:29,500 --> 00:14:36,480 So WPA enterprise, whether you're talking about WPA two or WPA three enterprise, 220 00:14:36,480 --> 00:14:42,540 the main differences are the types of encryption algorithms that are available 221 00:14:42,540 --> 00:14:45,000 to you. They're much, much stronger. 222 00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:48,880 But honestly, unless you're a software developer or something, you don't 223 00:14:48,880 --> 00:14:53,760 need to know the mechanics of how encryption algorithms actually work. 224 00:14:53,760 --> 00:14:57,520 Very high level, deep level math to get into that. 225 00:14:57,520 --> 00:15:00,700 But like I said, unless you're a physicist or a software developer writing 226 00:15:00,700 --> 00:15:03,360 your own code, you probably don't need to know that. 227 00:15:03,360 --> 00:15:06,140 Now, you should probably know that this encryption is better than this 228 00:15:06,140 --> 00:15:07,640 other one, stronger than this other one. 229 00:15:07,640 --> 00:15:12,120 But how it actually works, you don't need to know that it just works. 230 00:15:12,120 --> 00:15:16,820 So with enterprise version, yes, you get stronger encryption and you can 231 00:15:16,820 --> 00:15:19,600 select those encryption types when you're setting up your wireless LAN 232 00:15:19,600 --> 00:15:21,440 the first time in the first place. 233 00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:25,360 The other thing, obviously, it's different, is it uses 802.1x to talk 234 00:15:25,360 --> 00:15:30,800 between the server and the supplicant, which is your laptop, your tablet. 235 00:15:30,800 --> 00:15:36,560 And that can get very complicated about how 802.1x works, what you need 236 00:15:36,560 --> 00:15:47,780 to put on the client in of 802.1x and everything that happens there, that's 237 00:15:47,780 --> 00:15:49,480 worthy of its own separate course. 238 00:15:49,480 --> 00:15:51,700 Because there's a lot of stuff that gets involved with that. 239 00:15:51,700 --> 00:15:55,900 However, the features that we're going to talk about here in this personal 240 00:15:55,900 --> 00:15:59,540 edition of WPA three are exactly the same. 241 00:15:59,540 --> 00:16:03,420 If you're talking about WPA three with enterprise version. 242 00:16:03,420 --> 00:16:07,140 So once you get past the authentication, all the other stuff we're going 243 00:16:07,140 --> 00:16:09,380 to look at is exactly the same. 244 00:16:09,380 --> 00:16:13,880 The enhanced features, the new things that WPA three can do in personal 245 00:16:13,880 --> 00:16:18,780 mode is exactly the same as WPA three in enterprise mode. 246 00:16:18,780 --> 00:16:21,940 So the only thing you're going to be missing in this course is the actual 247 00:16:21,940 --> 00:16:28,080 mechanics of how the 802.1x stuff happens and the protocols involved in 248 00:16:28,080 --> 00:16:31,000 the 802.1x authentication exchange. 249 00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:33,300 But that's very, very detailed. 250 00:16:33,300 --> 00:16:36,540 And I couldn't create one course that does all of that. 251 00:16:36,540 --> 00:16:39,520 You'll see by the time you're done with this, you'll be all like, whoo, 252 00:16:39,520 --> 00:16:43,340 thank goodness you didn't put that in there because I'm like so overwhelmed. 253 00:16:43,340 --> 00:16:49,160 So just sit back, hang tight, and enjoy this course on WPA three personal.