Wirless Network Security

During some smaller conferences I visited some sessions regarding IT Security. As I played around with security in the past, I just grabbed up these old memories and want to share the insights and possibilities, when looking from an IT Security point of view on software or protocols. Within this chapter I would like to discuss wirless networking and how to access those networks, to understand the possibilities and how to lock them up. There are still two major network types available in 2017:

• Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)
• Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA & WPA2)
  Implements IEEE 802.11i standard from 2004. WPA is a partly implemented standard which could be upgraded to existing network interface cards since 1999.

These protocols consist of multiple components:

• Authentication Key Distribution
  • Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS)
    Authentication key distribution method, which simplifies the authentication process.
  • WPA-Personal, having a Pre Shared Key (WPA PSK)
    Authentication is implemented without authentication server, instead network devices encrypt network traffic using a 256 bit key (8-63 ASCII characters).
  • WPA-Enterprise (WPA)
    Authentication is done through a RADIUS authentication server. Various kinds of the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) are used for authentication.
• Robust Security Network Association (RSNA) data confidentiallity and integrity protocols
  • Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)
    Was compromised due to not sufficient strong data integrity guarantee for packages.
  • Counter Mode Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code Protocol (CCMP)
    • Temporary Key Integration Protocol (TKIP)
      Dynamically generates a new 128-bit key for each data package to resolve CRC compromising.
    • Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)