Hello,
I thought i'd share some of the pearls of wisdom I managed to learn as a network engineer and send a warning out to those using BTHomehubs.
Firstly a quick explanation, WLAN stands for Wireless Local Area Network and is the term used to denote your router/laptop/WLAN cards ability to send information over the 2.4ghz or 5Ghz frequencies.
2.4Ghz is for 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n although this one works a little bit differently.
5Ghz is for the slightly less common 802.11a and also 802.11n in certain respects afaik.
Anyway onto the crux of this topic. WEP encryption at any level is crackable, without too much knowledge or technilogical gizmos and can be done quite easily depending on the number of IV "segments" which can be listened to. All you need is a promiscuous (oooerrr!) wireless card, which can be found very very easily. I have 2.. both bought of Ebay.
So, essentially if someone has the right software (google Wep encryption cracking if you are interested), the right promiscuous WNIC and time, they can get your encryption key in anything from 4 seconds to let's say 5 minutes. 5 minutes is a damn long time and anyone with a bit of knowledge can usually do it in 2 minutes.
Right-o so basically WEP encryption is pants. Why should you be worried? Well pretty much every single BTHomeHub thingy out there is using WEP. Albeit 256 with rotating keys in certain cases, which means you would need to crack it periodically, but.. this is the main issue, they all have default passwords. This means if you're using one of these gizmos you're potentially broadcasting a easy to crack SSID, and anyone feeling naughty/nasty could be looking at things they shouldn't be.
WPA (and WPA2) uses much harder to crack encryption such as TKIP or AES. Both of which are nigh on impossible to "crack". You can use dictionary type attacks, man in the middle type attacks, but the end result is that it's not a simple question of sitting in a car outside your house and getting into your network in a couple of minutes easy.
What should you do if you're concerned? If you have the know-how, go ahead and change your "type" of wireless network to WPA, if not WPA2 (bearing in mind you need at least XP SP3 to connect to WPA2). Important to note, I believe this will invalidate your BTHomeHub support. I've done this for numerous friends and if you encounter a problem the person on the end of the phone will usually tell you "what does the sticker on the bottom of the HomeHub say" which is where the standard WEP key is located.
If you don't have the know-how, and feel like giving BT a hard time.. or any other provider who are sending you a router with WEP encryption enabled, then i'd very strongly recommend you contact them ASAP.
The reason for this post is that I saw Google have kindly published all the wireless networks for any savvy engineer to go and crack, which I find worrying.
If I was too technical, or not techhie enough then feel free to PM me, i'm more than happy to help.. or simply google as I said and you'll see the information there.
Cheers,
T