Is it possible that modern wireless card only supports WPA and not WEP or this is a bug in the driver?

[KAYVEN RIESE]

On Wed, 27 Feb 2008, Sam Leffler wrote:

> Yuri wrote:
>> I have a Linksys PCI wireless card that is being attached by "ral" driver:
>> ral0: <Ralink Technology RT2561S> mem 0xcffe8000-0xcffeffff irq 17 at 
>> device
>> 10.0 on pci0
>> ral0: MAC/BBP RT2561C, RF RT2527
>> ral0: Ethernet address: 00:18:f8:2e:40:25
>> ral0: [ITHREAD]
>> 
>> But when I do 'ifconfig ral0 list caps' it returns:
>> ral0=2181e500<IBSS,HOSTAP,TXPMGT,SHSLOT,SHPREAMBLE,MONITOR,WPA1,WPA2,BGSCAN>
>> and WEP isn't there.
>> 
>> This looks amazing since WEP is older and very widespread.

I am about to do a talk on WEP versus WPA for a course in internet
security.  I became acquainted with the protocols through a
60 minutes story.

http://tinyurl.com/2wucm3

WEP is not fully secure.  WPA or WPA2 is the improvement.  The
above story notes that American businesses are in arears with
respect to properly upgrading the wireless routers that they
use for financial processing.

>> 
>> So how can I tell if this card can't really support WEP or it's the driver 
>> that
>> can't support it?
>> 
>
> WEP is always supported.  The WEP capability bit means the driver uses the 
> hardware.  Many driver writers were too lazy to implement full driver support 
> and just fall back on the host to do crypto.
>
>> Also command:
>> ifconfig ral0 inet 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 ssid freebsdap wepmode 
>> on
>> weptxkey 3 wepkey 3:0x3456789012 authmode open mode 11g mediaopt hostap
>> succeeds though CAPS doesn't have WEP.
>> Isn't this a bug?
>>
>> 
>
> No, see above.
>
>   Sam
>
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   Kayven Riese, BSCS, MS (Physiology and Biophysics)
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