WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy, which is a security protocol used to secure wireless networks by encrypting data. It was introduced in 1997 as the first attempt at wireless protection. WEP encrypts traffic using a 64- or 128-bit key in hexadecimal, which is a static key, meaning all traffic, regardless of device, is encrypted using a single key. WEP keys allow computers on a network to exchange encoded messages while hiding the messages contents from intruders. One of WEP’s main goals was to prevent Man-in-the-Middle attacks, which it did for a time. However, despite revisions to the protocol and increased key size, various security flaws were discovered in the WEP standard over time. As computing power increased, it became easier for criminals to exploit those flaws. Because of its vulnerabilities, the Wi-Fi Alliance officially retired WEP in 2004. Today, WEP security is considered obsolete, although it is still sometimes in use – either because network administrators haven’t changed the default security on their wireless routers or because devices are too old to support newer encryption methods like WPA.