Chapter Eight Wireless LAN Security and Vulnerabilities Objectives
• Define information security
• Explain the basic security protections for IEEE 802.11 WLANs • List the vulnerabilities of the IEEE 802.11 standard • Describe the types of wireless attacks that can be launched against a wireless network
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 2
Security Principles: What is Information Security? • Information security: Task of guarding digital information – Ensures protective measures properly implemented – Protects confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) on the devices that store, manipulate, and transmit the information through products, people, and procedures
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 3
Security Principles: What is Information Security? (continued)
Figure 8-1: Information security components
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 4 Security Principles: Challenges of Securing Information • Trends influencing increasing difficultly in information security: – Speed of attacks – Sophistication of attacks – Faster detection of weaknesses • Day zero attacks – Distributed attacks • The “many against one” approach • Impossible to stop attack by trying to identify and block source
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Security Principles: Categories of Attackers • Six categories of attackers: – Hackers • Not malicious; expose security flaws – Crackers – Script kiddies – Spies – Employees – Cyberterrorists
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Security Principles: Categories of Attackers (continued)
Table 8-1: Attacker profiles
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Security Principles: Security Organizations • Many security organizations exist to provide security information, assistance, and training – Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERT/CC) – Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) – InfraGard – Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) – National Security Institute (NSI) – SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security (SANS) Institute
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Basic IEEE 802.11 Security Protections • Data transmitted by a WLAN could be intercepted and viewed by an attacker – Important that basic wireless security protections be built into WLANs • Three categories of WLAN protections: – Access control – Wired equivalent privacy (WEP) – Authentication • Some protections specified by IEEE, while others left to vendors CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 9 Access Control • Intended to guard availability of information • Wireless access control: Limit user’s admission to AP – Filtering • Media Access Control (MAC) address filtering: Based on a node’s unique MAC address
Figure 8-2: MAC address
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 10 Access Control (continued)
Figure 8-4: MAC address filtering
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 11 Access Control (continued)
• MAC address filtering considered to be a basic
means of controlling access – Requires pre-approved authentication – Difficult to provide temporary access for “guest” devices
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Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)
• Guard the confidentiality of information
– Ensure only authorized parties can view it • Used in IEEE 802.11 to encrypt wireless transmissions – “Scrambling”
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WEP: Cryptography
• Cryptography: Science of transforming
information so that it is secure while being transmitted or stored – scrambles” data • Encryption: Transforming plaintext to ciphertext • Decryption: Transforming ciphertext to plaintext • Cipher: An encryption algorithm – Given a key that is used to encrypt and decrypt messages – Weak keys: Keys that are easily discovered CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 14 WEP: Cryptography (continued)
Figure 8-5: Cryptography
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 15 WEP: Implementation • IEEE 802.11 cryptography objectives: – Efficient – Exportable – Optional – Reasonably strong – Self-synchronizing • WEP relies on secret key “shared” between a wireless device and the AP – Same key installed on device and AP – Private key cryptography or symmetric encryption CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 16 WEP: Implementation (continued)
Figure 8-6: Symmetric encryption
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 17 WEP: Implementation (continued) • WEP shared secret keys must be at least 40 bits – Most vendors use 104 bits • Options for creating WEP keys: – 40-bit WEP shared secret key (5 ASCII characters or 10 hexadecimal characters) – 104-bit WEP shared secret key (13 ASCII characters or 16 hexadecimal characters) – Passphrase (16 ASCII characters) • APs and wireless devices can store up to four shared secret keys – Default key used for all encryption
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WEP: Implementation (continued)
Figure 8-8: Default WEP keys
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 19 WEP: Implementation (continued)
Figure 8-9: WEP encryption process
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WEP: Implementation (continued)
• When encrypted frame arrives at destination:
– Receiving device separates IV from ciphertext – Combines IV with appropriate secret key • Create a keystream – Keystream used to extract text and ICV – Text run through CRC • Ensure ICVs match and nothing lost in transmission • Generating keystream using the PRNG is based on the RC4 cipher algorithm – Stream Cipher
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WEP: Implementation (continued)
Figure 8-10: Stream cipher
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Authentication
• IEEE 802.11 authentication: Process in which AP
accepts or rejects a wireless device • Open system authentication: – Wireless device sends association request frame to AP • Carries info about supported data rates and service set identifier (SSID) – AP compares received SSID with the network SSID • If they match, wireless device authenticated
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Authentication (continued)
• Shared key authentication: Uses WEP keys
– AP sends the wireless device the challenge text – Wireless device encrypts challenge text with its WEP key and returns it to the AP – AP decrypts returned result and compares to original challenge text • If they match, device accepted into network
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Vulnerabilities of IEEE 802.11 Security
• IEEE 802.11 standard’s security mechanisms for
wireless networks have fallen short of their goal • Vulnerabilities exist in: – Authentication – Address filtering – WEP
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Open System Authentication Vulnerabilities • Inherently weak – Based only on match of SSIDs – SSID beaconed from AP during passive scanning • Easy to discover • Vulnerabilities: – Beaconing SSID is default mode in all APs – Not all APs allow beaconing to be turned off • Or manufacturer recommends against it – SSID initially transmitted in plaintext (unencrypted)
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Open System Authentication Vulnerabilities (continued) • Vulnerabilities (continued): – If an attacker cannot capture an initial negotiation process, can force one to occur – SSID can be retrieved from an authenticated device – Many users do not change default SSID • Several wireless tools freely available that allow users with no advanced knowledge of wireless networks to capture SSIDs
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Open System Authentication Vulnerabilities (continued)
Figure 8-12: Forcing the renegotiation process
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Shared Secret Key Authentication Vulnerabilities • Attackers can view key on an approved wireless device (i.e., steal it), and then use on own wireless devices • Brute force attack: Attacker attempts to create every possible key combination until correct key found • Dictionary attack: Takes each word from a dictionary and encodes it in same way as passphrase – Compare encoded dictionary words against encrypted frame
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Shared Secret Key Authentication Vulnerabilities (continued) • AP sends challenge text in plaintext – Attacker can capture challenge text and device’s response (encrypted text and IV) • Mathematically derive keystream
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 31 Address Filtering Vulnerabilities
Table 8-3: MAC address attacks
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WEP Vulnerabilities
• Uses 40 or 104 bit keys
– Shorter keys easier to crack • WEP implementation violates cardinal rule of cryptography – Creates detectable pattern for attackers – APs end up repeating IVs • Collision: Two packets derived from same IV – Attacker can use info from collisions to initiate a keystream attack
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WEP Vulnerabilities (continued)
Figure 8-13: XOR operations
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 34 WEP Vulnerabilities (continued)
Figure 8-14: Capturing packets
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WEP Vulnerabilities (continued)
• PRNG does not create true random number
– Pseudorandom – First 256 bytes of the RC4 cipher can be determined by bytes in the key itself
Table 8-4: WEP attacks
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 36 Other Wireless Attacks: Man-in-the- Middle Attack • Makes it seem that two computers are communicating with each other – Actually sending and receiving data with computer between them – Active or passive
Figure 8-15: Intercepting transmissions
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 37 Other Wireless Attacks: Man-in-the- Middle Attack (continued)
Figure 8-16: Wireless man-in-the-middle attack
CWNA Guide to Wireless LANs, Second Edition 38 Other Wireless Attacks: Denial of Service (DoS) Attack • Standard DoS attack attempts to make a server or other network device unavailable by flooding it with requests – Attacking computers programmed to request, but not respond • Wireless DoS attacks are different: – Jamming: Prevents wireless devices from transmitting – Forcing a device to continually dissociate and re- associate with AP
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Summary
• Information security protects the confidentiality,
integrity, and availability of information on the devices that store, manipulate, and transmit the information through products, people, and procedures • Significant challenges in keeping wireless networks and devices secure • Six categories of attackers: Hackers, crackers, script kiddies, computer spies, employees, and cyberterrorists
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Summary (continued)
• Three categories of default wireless protection:
access control, wired equivalent privacy (WEP), and authentication • Significant security vulnerabilities exist in the IEEE 802.11 security mechanisms • Man-in-the-middle attacks and denial of service attacks (DoS) can be used to attack wireless networks