With regards to a wireless network it’s clear that WPA offers a more secure method of encryption then WEP.

But I was wondering that if you were using WEP and you connected to a secure site (for example paypal or an internet banking site) then would the 128-bit ssl connection be secure enough so that ‘onlookers’ would not be able to read the packets sent from my laptop to my wireless router?

i.e. what I’m asking (in a nutshell) is would the presence of the 128-bit ssl encryption make the flaws of WEP irrelevant?

I believe that the two are independant of each other. In other words, the flaws in WEP remain even across an SSL connection. Now if someone does manage to crack the WEP key, they are still going to see the SSL traffic as encrypted.

If you're worried about people snooping on your WEP encrypted wireless network, there are a few extra obstacle you can throw up to make it more difficult:
- Most access points allow you to issue IP addresses only to pre-approved MAC addresses. While MAC addresses are trivial to spoof, it is one more thing a cracker has to solve.

- Regularly change your WEP key. Yes, its a pain but again it raises the amount of trouble that a cracker has to deal with to gain access.

-Make sure all computers on your LAN have a good firewall in place and all your OSs are patched.

Right, so if someone manages to get hold of my 'packets' by cracking the WEP key, they would be able to 'SEE' the data I'm sending regardless of the fact that I'm connected via ssl?

No, that's not it. If someone were able to crack your WEP, they would see the SSL encrypted packets. Just cracking the WEP security should have no impact on the SSL encryption. The two are independant of each other.