WEP and WPA are the two main security protocols used in Wi-Fi LAN. WEP, or Wired Equivalent Privacy, is a deprecated security protocol that was introduced back in 1997 as a part of the original 802.11 standards. However, it was weak, and several serious weaknesses were found in the protocol. Now, this can be cracked within minutes.
A new Wi-Fi security protocol was introduced in 2003. This new protocol was Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). While most routers currently use WPA or WPA2, a third version called WPA3 was certified a few years ago and is designed to replace the existing protocols.
To get unauthorized access to a network, one needs to crack these security protocols. Many tools can crack Wi-Fi encryption. These tools can either take advantage of WEP weaknesses or use brute force password guessing attacks on WPA/WPA2/WPA3.
