WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

National Institute of Science & Technology

Wireless LAN Security

Presented By
SWAGAT SOURAV Roll # EE 200118189

Under the guidance of

Mr. Siddhartha Bhusan Neelamani

Swagat Sourav [1]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

Introduction
National Institute of Science & Technology

• It is also easy to interfere with wireless communications. A

simple jamming transmitter can make communications
impossible. For example, consistently hammering an
access point with access requests, whether successful or
not, will eventually exhaust its available radio frequency
spectrum and knock it off the network.

• Advantages of WLAN

• Disadvantages WLAN

Swagat Sourav [2]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

WLAN Authentication
National Institute of Science & Technology

• Wireless LANs, because of their broadcast nature, require the

addition of:
User authentication
Data privacy
• Authenticating wireless LAN clients.

Client Authentication Process

Swagat Sourav [3]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

WLAN Authentication
National Institute of Science & Technology

• Types Of Authentication
 Open Authentication
• The authentication request
• The authentication response
 Shared Key Authentication
• requires that the client configure a static WEP key
 Service Set Identifier (SSID)
 MAC Address Authentication
• MAC address authentication verifies the client’s MAC
address against a locally configured list of allowed
addresses or against an external authentication server

Swagat Sourav [4]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

WLAN Authentication Vulnerabilities

National Institute of Science & Technology

• SSID
An eavesdropper can easily determine the SSID with the use of an
802.11 wireless LAN packet analyzer, like Sniffer Pro.

• Open Authentication
Open authentication provides no way for the access point to
determine whether a client is valid.

• Shared Key Authentication Vulnerabilities

The process of exchanging the challenge text occurs over the
wireless link and is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack

• MAC Address Authentication Vulnerabilities

A protocol analyzer can be used to determine a valid MAC
address
Swagat Sourav [5]
 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

WEP Encryption
National Institute of Science & Technology

• WEP is based on the RC4 algorithm, which is a symmetric

key stream cipher. The encryption keys must match on both
the client and the access point for frame exchanges to succeed
 Stream Ciphers

Encrypts data by generating a key stream from the key and

performing the XOR function on the key stream with the plain-text
data
Swagat Sourav [6]
 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

WEP Encryption
National Institute of Science & Technology

 Block Ciphers

Fragments the frame into blocks of predetermined size and performs

the XOR function on each block.

Swagat Sourav [7]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

WEP Encryption Weaknesses

National Institute of Science & Technology

• There are two encryption techniques to overcome WEP

encryption weakness
Initialization vectors
Feedback modes
• Initialization vectors

Swagat Sourav [8]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

WEP Encryption Weaknesses

National Institute of Science & Technology

• Feedback Modes

Swagat Sourav [9]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

WEP Encryption Weaknesses

National Institute of Science & Technology

• Statistical Key Derivation—Passive Network Attacks

A WEP key could be derived by passively collecting particular frames
from a wireless LAN

• Inductive Key Derivation—Active Network Attacks

Inductive key derivation is the process of deriving a key by coercing
information from the wireless LAN

 Initialization Vector Replay Attacks

 Bit-Flipping Attacks
• Static WEP Key Management Issues

Swagat Sourav [10]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

Component of WLAN Security

National Institute of Science & Technology

• The Authentication Framework (802.1X)

• The EAP Authentication Algorithm
 Mutual Authentication
 User-Based Authentication
 Dynamic WEP Keys

• Data Privacy with TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol )

 A message integrity check (MIC
 Per-packet keying
 Broadcast Key Rotation

Swagat Sourav [11]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

Future of WLAN Security

National Institute of Science & Technology

• AES (Advanced Encryption Standard )

 AES-OCB Mode

Swagat Sourav [12]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

Future of WLAN Security

National Institute of Science & Technology

 AES-CCM Mode

Swagat Sourav [13]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY

Conclusion
National Institute of Science & Technology

Wireless LAN deployments should be made as secure

as possible. Standard 802.11 security is weak and
vulnerable to numerous network attacks. This paper has
highlighted these vulnerabilities and described how it
can be solved to create secure wireless LANs.
Some security enhancement features might not be
deployable in some situations because of device
limitations such as application specific devices (ASDs
such as 802.11 phones capable of static WEP only) or
mixed vendor environments. In such cases, it is
important that the network administrator understand the
potential WLAN security vulnerabilities.

Swagat Sourav [14]

 WIRELESS LAN SECURITY
National Institute of Science & Technology

Thank You!!!

Swagat Sourav [15]