WLAN STRONG KEY GENERATOR v2.2 by Warewolf Labs
NEWS & UPDATES:
2005-01-25: This program was originally written and freely distributed in 2001 with the goal of allowing the average consumer to easily lock down their wireless network with WEP, while at the same time employing something stronger than simple, easily-guessed words or phrases that were susceptible to offline dictionary attacks.
Much has changed in the wireless network security landscape since the inception of this program. Techniques and programs are now available (cf. the article here) which can crack a WEP key in such a short period, that any last vestiges of credibility that WEP may have once held in providing effective security have been cast out.
Therefore, it is important to realize that WEP (regardless of key strength) will only keep out casual intruders, and any concerted effort will allow an attacker into your network without too much trouble. With this caveat in mind, the generation of WEP keys will remain intact in this tool to allow for some (albeit slim) measure of protection for network devices which are limited to WEP-based protective measures.
A future release of the WLAN Strong Key Generator will provide the capability to generate a strong Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key (WPA-PSK).
INSTRUCTIONS:
To generate a random WEP key, select the bit key length to generate and press the corresponding button; the ASCII or HEX key can then be copied to your clipboard manually or via the "copy to clipboard" button to the right of the Generated Key text fields. Note that in order to be as platform-independent as possible, characters used for generation of these keys are limited to a subset of the basic ASCII code table (95 elements, including the letters "a" to "z", "A" to "Z", and most punctuation and other standard symbols; at the time that this original program was written, support for Unicode was not widely present among the installed base of consumer operating systems to allow for the inclusion of extended characters which would increase the strength of WEP keys generated with this program).
You can also generate a custom WEP key based on your own pass phrase or other input. IMPORTANT: this function simply converts your supplied input from ASCII to HEX form; it does not apply any other transformations or algorithms upon it, therefore your custom key will only be as strong as your source material.
A good primer on WEP key setup and terms is located here.
NOTES:
- If your product vendor requests 40-bit keys, use the 64-bit key - If your product vendor requests 104-bit keys, use the 128-bit key - Apple users can enter HEX keys into their AirPort setup by prefixing the generated string with a"$" symbol (i.e. if the generated HEX code is 6b5e454532 then you would enter $6b5e454532 into your configuration)
Custom WEP Key
NOTE: 5/13/16/29 characters are needed for 64/128/152/256-bit WEP
Custom Phrase
Character Count
Generated Key
ASCII
HEX