From the course: ISC2 Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP) (2024) Cert Prep

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Wireless authentication

Wireless authentication

- [Instructor] While some wireless networks are meant for open access by anyone who wishes to use them, most wireless networks limit access to authorized users. There are three primary mechanisms to authenticate the users of a wireless network: preshared keys, enterprise authentication and captive portals. Pre-shared keys are the simplest kind of wireless authentication, and they're commonly used on home wifi networks. In the preshared key approach, the network uses an encryption key to control access. Whenever a user wishes to connect a device to the network, they must enter that preshared key on the device. The preshared key may be entered directly as a 64-character hexadecimal string, (chuckles) but that's a very unwieldy approach. Instead, most networks that use preshared keys ask users to enter a password consisting of between eight and 13 ASCII characters. The network then uses the PBKDF2 key stretching function to…

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