Which term stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy?

• A. Wired Equivalent Privacy
• B. Wireless Encryption Protocol
• C. Wireless Equivalence Privacy
• D. Wireless Access Protocol

Answer: (A)

Wired Equivalent Privacy is the term for the original security protocol defined for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks, intended to provide confidentiality on par with wired networks. It relies on the RC4 stream cipher and a shared key, with a 24-bit initialization vector to seed the cipher. The name promises equivalent privacy, but the design has well-known flaws: the small IV space leads to IV reuse; shared keys and weak integrity protection (CRC-based) allow tampering and easier attacks. Because of these weaknesses, WEP is deprecated and replaced by more secure standards like WPA and WPA2 (and now WPA3). The other options don’t correspond to the official name for this protocol; they aren’t recognized terms for the standard.