Wireless local area network security and modern cryptographic protocols: WEP & WPA1/2/3

Abstract

Modern wireless local area networks (WLAN) and the cryptographic protocols on which they are constructed, based on the IEEE 802.11 protocol, including WEP-WPA1/2/3 Personal as well as Enterprise, are susceptible to a variation of generic & availability attacks,including server-side and client-side attack vectors.

In particular, the WEP protocol has been proved for some years to be in a state of effective cryptanalysis through attack tools, so it’s globally non-safe to use and completely deprecated as a cryptographic protocol, while WPA1/2 protocols are susceptible either to brute-force attacks, which are now more feasible due to the smart usage of Cloud technologies, including GPU cloud clustered systems, either to attack vectors which exploit vulnerable points (at the Access Point soft- ware/firmware or at the client software/firmware) of multiple implementations (e.g 4-way hand- shake implementations) of these protocols.

Nowadays the WPA3 protocol comes with fortified cryptography which is used to fix some of the basic vulnerabilities of the WPA1/2 protocol, with basically evaporating the attack vector of offline brute-force attempts against the 4-way handshake, and fortifying at the same the modern Access Points against standard Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks (deauth/disassoc attacks) with the usage of IEEE 802.11w Protected Management Frames (PMF), and beacon frames protection in the future. But not withstanding the benefits of the WPA3 protocol, new attack vectors are currently arising related to Denial-of-Service attacks against WPA3 infrastructure which are still explored by the information security community.

This master thesis attempts to make a categorization for wireless attacks in general and specif- ically for these protocols, while trying to analyze how particular detection methods and defenses can be built for wireless attacks, aiming at a Wireless Intrusion Detection System (WIDS) or a wireless forensics platform.