Vulnerability in the Wireless Network
Rafael Reccy
Seminole State College
Abstract
Wi-Fi can be found anywhere in this day in age, you can walk into almost any establishment and you’ll be sure to find their Wi-Fi, accessible from anywhere within their spaces. Each data packet being transmitted through the air, whether containing private, sensitive or insensitive information, is available for an attacker to capture. To fight against this, there have been some standards that have come out through the years to guard and protect data, such as WPA. All standards have been created to replace the preceding one due to vulnerabilities found in the engineering of them. Still to this day, not every standard is fully secure, attackers still find
…show more content…
Although, there is one of the vulnerabilities that is pretty much impossible to guard against, DoS like Molta points out, “Other problems are looming, the most pernicious of which are DoS (denial of service) attacks. While DoS is a fact of life on all networks, it's worse on wireless networks because not only do you need to guard against attacks at Layer 2 and above, you're also extremely vulnerable to physical-layer attacks to the medium” (Molta, 2002, p. 18). In this essay, some vulnerabilities will be looked at that can affect Wi-Fi home users as well as businesses that implement wireless networks because both types of networks can be affected by the same types of intrusion or disruption attacks. Even though this paper is about vulnerabilities, it is important to point out that wi-fi networks can still be operated safely with a high level of security in place.
Wireless networks are considered vulnerable when an incident occurs that exploits the capability to perform the desired requirement of maintaining performance and concealment of data. Most vulnerabilities happen because of the science behind a wireless network, the fact that it uses air as a medium makes it harder to protects because the environment of air is not stable and when it comes to delivering sacred information you must be on
Malware consists of viruses which are programs that attach themselves to legitimate programs on a victim’s machine. Worms are standalone programs that do not attach themselves to other programs. Direct propagation words take advantage of vulnerabilities in software. Blended threats propagate both as viruses and worms however; they post themselves on websites for people to download unwillingly. The payrolls are being nine they merely pop up Ace message on the victims computer screen or do something unknowing but nonlethal damage. Trojan horses, hides itself by deleting a system file and taking on the system file name. Remote access Trojan gives the attacker remote control of your computer. These items mentioned above do not rename themselves they can cause great damage or be just a nuisance.
WAP came in shortly behind WEP with secure networking communication in mind. It’s a later discovered that WEP doesn’t protect much at all and was then replaced with WPA/WPA2. WPA/WPA2 is the most widely used today. In fact, the only time WEP should be used is when there needs to be communication with old devices that don’t support encryption. WEP, or Wired Equivalent Privacy, is not hard encryption to crack. WAP, or Wireless Application Protocol, uses a smaller revision of HTML called Wireless Markup Language (WML), and is used is wireless devices. WPA/WPA2 is now known as the most secure communication over the internet today. WTLS, Wireless Transport Layer Security, provides authentication, encryption, and data integrity for wireless devices (Dulaney,
Wireless security in 802.11 is less robust and has many security flaws that can be exploited by an attacker. Security best practice for wireless networks depends on a defense in depth strategy, with five control layers:
Privacy: In a wireless network all the devices are able to hear data traffic within their ranges which can be a threat to the security of the link. IEEE 802.11 counters this problem by offering a privacy service option that raises the security level of the 802.11 network to that of a wired network.
To improve security, the Wi-Fi uses various built-in WEP encryption technologies to prevent attacks from
Guidelines: It’s always best to introduce a paper to the reader. It sets the tone and provides an overview of what will be covered and what the goals are.
Outline a wireless network and technology that you use regularly. The WLANs which are derived from the IEEE 802.11 standards, and marketed under the Wi-Fi trademark name. The WLANs security is neither forthright/candid nor simple, and it is continuously varying. Even though, as WLAN increase client output, they also expose the networks to a new group of potential hackers. With the present inherent security weakness of the 802.11 standard, all companies, small, medium or large, need to find out their security conditions derived from the applications using the WLAN. The standards also provide requirements for high-speed networks that support most modern-day applications. What sorts of security issues do
16. Although rogue access devices can be installed innocently, they can also be installed by an attacker trying to gain unauthorized access to a wireless network. In such cases, these devices are called
Users that have a wireless LAN should add security to ensure only intended users have access. Some safeguards include use of WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) encryption, IPsec, WPA (WiFi Protected Access), with a firewall or DMZ. A DMZ (demilitarized zone) is a physical or logical sub-network that separates the LAN from other entrusted networks
Wi-Fi Protected Access 2, the follow on security method to WPA for wireless networks that provides stronger data protection and network access control. It provides enterprise and consumer Wi-Fi users with a high level of assurance that only authorized users can access their wireless networks. Based on the IEEE 802.11i standard, WPA2 provides government grade security by implementing the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) FIPS 140-2 compliant AES encryption algorithm and 802.1x-based authentication.
An unsecure WIFI network is the equivalent of an unlocked front door. You don’t leave your office unlocked over night therefore you shouldn’t leave your WIFI unlocked. Protect your WIFI with a strong password made up of the criteria described in tip number 1.
Wireless networking hardware requires the use of underlying technology that deals with radio frequencies as well as data transmission. The most widely used standard is 802.11 produced by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). This is a standard defining all aspects of Radio Frequency Wireless networking
Juby Joseph et al (2014), “Misdirection Attack in WSN Due to Selfish Nodes; Detection and Suppression using Longer Path Protocol”, 2014 There is a lot of use of the wireless sensor networks in fields which have consumers and in industrial and defense areas also it has its involvements. The networks are vulnerable and prone to the attacks of outsiders. It is very commonly found that the attackers attack the security of the networks. The wireless sensor networks are also been attacked by various kinds of outsiders in different ways. The Denial of Service (DoS) attacks have another kind
Two major threats to wireless client devices are (1) loss or theft, and (2) compromise. Many of us store our confidential and proprietary information in our Laptops and PDAs, loss or theft of such kind of devices may cause the organization to be in violation of privacy regulations involving the disclosure of personal identifying information it has collected from third parties. Another threat to wireless client devices is that they can be compromised so that an attacker can access sensitive information stored on the device or use it to obtain unauthorized access to other system resources.
These studies by InfoSec also show that eliminating older wireless authentications methods greatly reduces risk. In an article publish by ZDnet in