Wow – I would never have thought that in this day and age, a major vendor like Microsoft wouldn’t fully implement a spec. However, in the case of WPA2 it looks like that they did exactly that – at least until 2005.
BUT making things more interesting- this was an “optional” update with XP SP2, until it was finally rolled into XP SP3. There is a hotfix for XP SP2 machines in order to support WPA2 – KB 893357.
WPA2/AES didnt’ really become widely implemented until 2006, but it was in the 802.11i spec that introduced WPA in 2004. For a major vendor like MS to not implement it is pretty crazy. But then again I, as a wireless security professional, didn’t setup a WPA2/AES network in my home until last month. So maybe they were onto something.
Anyways, if you’re using XPSP2 and a WPA2 network – you need the hotfix, or XPSP3+. Good luck out there! I really recommend moving to WPA2/AES, especially considering the improvements in the Nvidia CUDA drivers that are allowing TKIP to be broken in an increasingly short amount of time.