Sunday, February 27, 2005

WAPI Whacked. Chinese peeved, walked out over procedural move in ISO over WAPI: The Wireless Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) proprietary standard that the Chinese government originally intended as a mandatory element for all domestically sold Wi-Fi gear was made optional and moved into the ISO standards organization to be approved as an international protocol. It was fast-tracked for approval initially, but then through a procedural move placed into a slower track. 802.11i remains fast tracked and may be approved as an optional security standard by April. I learned recently that the Chinese object to 802.11i because it includes a 128-bit key length version of AES which they believe the NSA has the ability to decipher. The corresponding problem with WAPI is that it is a proprietary protocol controlled by the government which leads one to believe that it has either a back-door or a weak known flaw in it that would allow interception.... [Wi-Fi Networking News] 8:10:44 PM