Page "Wake-on-LAN" Paragraph 24

Certain NICs support a security feature called " SecureOn ".

It allows users to store within the NIC a hexadecimal password of 6 bytes.

Clients have to append this password to the magic packet.

The NIC wakes the system only if the MAC address and password are correct.

This security measure significantly decreases the risk of successful brute force attacks, by increasing the search space by 48 bits ( 6 bytes ), up to 2 < sup > 96 </ sup > combinations if the MAC address is entirely unknown.

However any network eavesdropping will expose the cleartext password.