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Early Problems
Beacon frames – used to announce the presence of a network
MAC spoofing and session hijacking
Traffic analysis and eavesdropping
Most actual wireless implementations employ no security measures at all. None, nada, zip, zilch....
Notes:
Beacon frames allow WiFi NICs to find your network and be able to join (they don't work by telepathy). This is how war drivers find you. Don't confuse this with SSID broadcast, it isn't the same.
Just as MAC addresses are no secret on wired networks, they aren't on wireless either. MAC spoofing and session hijacking are easily possible in an unencrypted network.
WEP doesn't encode control frames so traffic analysis, and other forms of eaves dropping are certainly possible on unencrypted links. There were major problems in many early WEP implementations that left even encrypted traffic subject to exposure.