Types of Wi-Fi authentication:-
Wi-Fi
Authentication can be done by using Open authentication, WEP, WPA & WPA2 or
may be some time MAC based authentication is also used. In Open authentication
as per name suggest there is no authentication required it is like open for
public to connect, this type of authentication is least secure. Second one is
Wired Equivalency Protocol or WEP this type of authentication we use Shared Key
for Authentication. A WEP key is composite of either 40bit or 128bit
encryption, but still this type of authentication is not very much secured.
WPA/WPA2 shared key authentication is very much secure than WEP the also use
shared key authentication as WEP but the difference is in the WEP Access-Point
send password to client machine in encrypted form as a challenge string then
client send it back by solving the challenge string, but in the WPA/WPA2 client
send the password string to the access-point and then access-point, so unlike
password in not stored in client machine. In MAC-based authentication client is
authenticated by using its MAC address this type of authentication is not
secure or maybe I can say it is as weak authentication as open authentication.