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Wireless Security: The Complete Documentation

• This category contains 17 Papers
• The last paper was added on 2007-03-26 (YYYY-MM-DD)

802.11 Wireless Network has No Clothes (Your)

Published on March 30, 2001, by William A. Arbaugh, Narendar Shankar, Y.C. Justin Wan, ©University of Maryland.

The explosive growth in wireless networks over the last few years resembles the rapid growth of the Internet within the last decade. During the beginning of the commercialization of the Internet, organizations and individuals connected without concern for the security of their system or network. Over time, it became apparent that some form of security was required to prevent outsiders from exploiting the connected resources. To protect the internal resources, organizations usually purchased and installed an Internet firewall.

Air Safety

Published on April 2003, by Lisa Phifer, ©TechTarget.

First-generation wireless networking placed you between a rock and a hard place. Should you cave in and deploy a WLAN, despite well-documented protocol vulnerabilities and rampant threats? Or should you try to ban wireless, despite its business advantages and the unnerving suspicion that rogue access points (APs) will crop up anyway?

Case of a wireless hack

Published on 2005-06-15, by Siim Põder, ©ConsultPlanet, Inc..

This is a short story about using a couple of computers, some interesting tools, an operating system and a bit of thinking to solve a not-entirely-artificial problem of getting wireless internet access where measureas are in place to stop it. Both the technical side as well as some of the reasoning behind the actions are explained.

Cool and Illegal Wireless Hacks

Published on 2006-08-21, by Daniel V. Hoffman, ©Passivemode security group.

So, why write an article called Cool and Illegal Wireless Hacks that details how to perform hotspot hacks? Some would say it is irresponsible and enables those with ill intent to hack unsuspecting victim’s machines. It really depends which way you look at it. Would you rather be left in the dark on what types of attacks can occur, how they are performed and not know how to protect yourself against them? Doing so would not make the threats go away; in part, you would simply be denying that they exist. Surely, it is safer to be open and honest about the threats, understand how they can occur then become educated on and implement the appropriate countermeasures. In large part, that is why my articles always detail not only how to perform the hacks, but really focus on how to protect against them. The purpose is not to teach people how to hack, but rather to educate on how to prevent systems from being exploited.

Cyber guerilla networking

Published on September 02, 2003, by Judith M. Myerson, ©IBM.

Cyber guerillas are the newest breed of hackers. They love to hunt and sniff the air for signals emitted from the wireless handheld devices that you use to connect primarily with the WLAN. They then exploit the vulnerable network to launch an attack. In this article, Judith talks about who the cyber guerillas are and where you will most likely meet them. Additionally, she'll cover the various wireless security issues and describe how they use the tools of the trade to intercept, intrude upon, and attack the unprotected wireless traffic. Finally, a brief discussion about the VPN support, followed by a list of the shortcomings of mobile devices # with suggested solutions to overcome them, of course.

Establishing Wireless Robust Security Networks: A Guide to IEEE 802.11i

Published on 2007-02, by Sheila Frankel, Bernard Eydt, Les Owens and Karen Scarfone, ©National Institute of Standards and Technology.

A wireless local area network (WLAN) enables access to computing resources for devices that are not physically connected to a network. WLANs typically operate over a fairly limited range, such as an office building or building campus, and usually are implemented as extensions to existing wired local area networks to enhance user mobility. This guide seeks to assist organizations in better understanding the most commonly used family of standards for WLANs—Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11—focusing on the security enhancements introduced in the IEEE 802.11i amendment. In particular, this guide explains the security

Facing the Challenge of Wireless Security

Published on March 30, 2001, by Sandra Kay Miller, ©Sandra Kay Miller.

Increasingly, companies and individuals are using wireless technology for important communications they want to keep private, such as mobile e-commerce transactions, email, and corporate data transmissions.

Factual and Legal Risks Regarding Wireless Computer Networks

Published on 2002, by Maximillian Dornseif, Kay H. Schumann, Christian Klein, ©Maximillian Dornseif, Kay H. Schumann, Christian Klein.

In the past few months there have been many articles on the risks of Wave-LANs, the wireless computer networks according to the IEEE 802.11 standard. The terms drive-by-hacking and/or war driving are being used. However, so far methodical inquests have concentrated on cryptographic problems. In this article we will explain the significance of these problems in the context of protocol mechanisms and make an evaluation of the penal code in respect thereof. In addition, we will present the results of an assessment of the actual situation -- for this purpose we investigated the extension and configuration of Wave- LANs in the Bonn area.

Powerful Wireless Security Tools for Free

Published on August 20, 2003, by Vincent Ryan, ©NewsFactor Network, Inc..

For a network administrator or curious end-user looking to do basic sniffing of the airwaves for WLAN traffic and locations, Kismet, NetStumbler and AirSnort have a price that's hard to beat.

Secure Your Wireless with IPsec

Published on 2004-10-21, by Dan Langille, ©O'Reilly Media, Inc..

Wireless access is all the rage. Wireless this, wireless that. Hot spots are turning up everywhere. Many are free. Many have absolutely no security. There are several in my neighborhood. I have no idea who is running them, but at least one is wide open. This article will show you one method for locking down your wireless network so that nobody but you can use it. This approach will take you beyond WEP and MAC address filtering, both of which are a good start but have known exploits. This article expands upon the IPsec foundation and demonstrates an easy method for securing your Wireless Access Point (WAP).

Security Risks In The Wireless Computing Environment

Published on 2004-12-22, by Jerry Malcolm, ©Help Net Security.

The wireless network as a computing paradigm has brought unprecedented access, flexibility and usability to the I.T. environment in a relatively short time. When one considers that the "conventional" computing environment of an enclosed mainframe system accessed exclusively by hard wired terminals, evolved over a period of 30+ years. Such slow growth of an I.T. system allowed for a maturing of the implementation plan and the time to develop adequate security measures.

Sniffing the Air for Trouble

Published on April 2003, by Lisa Phifer, ©TechTarget.

Security managers have a variety of tools available for keeping WLANs safe.

Wardriving HOWTO

Published on April 09, 2002, by Fred, ©Wardriving.

This document functions as a starting guide to exploring wireless networks, from a legal, ethical and security point of view. I hereby claim absolutely no responsibility to which manner this information is used. Information is neither inherently good nor evil, but how people choose to use that information makes them good or evil.

WEP: Dead Again, Part 1

Published on 2004-12-14, by Michael Ossmann, ©SecurityFocus.

This article is the first of a two-part series that looks at the new generation of WEP cracking tools for WiFi networks, which offer dramatically faster speeds for penetration testers over the previous generation of tools. In many cases, a WEP key can be determined in seconds or minutes. Part one, below, compares the latest KoreK based tools that perform passive statistical analysis and brute-force cracking on a sample of collected WEP traffic. Next time, in part two, we'll look at active attack vectors, including a method to dramatically increase the rate of packet collection to make statistical attacks even more potent.

Wireless Insecurities

Published on January 2002, by Dale Gardner, ©TechTarget.

It's a sight that would make any sales manager proud: your company's top sales rep is dutifully e-mailing detailed reports on the day's activities over a public wireless 802.11b network as he waits for his lunch across the street from the office. But would your sales manager be quite so happy if she knew the sensitive data transmissions sent from the rep's laptop could be grabbed by anyone else within a few hundred yards?

Wireless Network Policy Development (Part 1)

Published on 2003-09-18, by Jamil Farshchi, ©SecurityFocus.

The need for wireless policy has never been greater. 802.11/a/b/g wireless networks (WLANs) have taken the Information Technology world by storm. With 35 million units expected to sell in 2003 and with a predicted growth rate of 50-200% compounded year over year through 2006, wireless is here to stay. The benefits of wireless connectivity in the business world are immense; they come in the form of flexibility, convenience, portability, increased productivity, relatively low cost, and ease of implementation. These benefits are not without an expense, though. The same aspects that make wireless so desirable in terms of usability and productivity can also become an Achilles heel if the proper security measures are not addressed throughout the network's life-cycle.

Wireless Security and Hacking

Published on October 09, 2003, by Dr. T, ©eBCVG Network.

This is the last article in the Wireless series. Just to remind you, the first article introduced the reader to the Wireless world and discussed Wireless devices and protocols. The second article went deeper into Wireless networks, provided general info on WLAN and discussed IEEE standards for them. This article deals with WLAN security, explains the most common attack techniques and introduces some useful tools.