Wired Equivalent Privacy

Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is an obsolete security algorithm for 802.11 wireless networks. It was introduced as part of the original IEEE 802.11 standard ratified in 1997. The standard described WEP as providing a level of security and privacy comparable to that of a traditional wired network. WEP, recognizable by its key of 10 or 26 hexadecimal digits (40 or 104 bits), was once widely used and was often the default security option presented to users by router configuration tools. After a major design flaw in the algorithm was disclosed in 2001, WEP was no longer considered secure. In most cases, Wi-Fi hardware that relied on WEP could not be upgraded to support stronger encryption. Some of WEP's flaws were addressed in WEP2, but it also proved insecure and was never widely adopted or standardized.

In 2003, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced that WEP and WEP2 had been superseded by Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). In 2004, with the ratification of the full 802.11i standard (i.e. WPA2), the IEEE declared that both WEP-40 and WEP-104 were deprecated. WPA retained some design characteristics of WEP that continued to present weaknesses.

WEP was the only encryption protocol available to 802.11a and 802.11b devices built before the WPA standard, which was introduced with 802.11g. Some 802.11b devices later received firmware or software updates to enable WPA, and newer devices included it by default.