Wireless LAN (WLAN) chipset maker Atheros Communications has released one of its key security technologies to the open source community.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company submitted code for its JumpStart for Wireless security configuration software to SourceForge.net for use by anyone in the wireless LAN industry. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has already certified the code for JumpStart for Wireless.
Based on the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol, JumpStart lets multiple devices obtain a WPA encryption key long enough and complex enough that it is difficult to get around without that key being re-entered on each machine.
If the user decides on a short, not very complicated, but perfectly legal password -- like spaghetti -- JumpStart uses the secure key exchange to compensate.