An enhanced 4-way technique using cookies for robust authentication process in wireless network

Abstract

In Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) IEEE802.11, during the connection establishment four way handshake approaches is used for authentication. 4-way handshake approach, thought has been worked upon by many researchers, but this approach has some inadequacies like Denial of Service (DoS), Memory Exhaustion (ME), Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and flooding attacks. A solution for aforementioned vulnerabilities is proposed in this work. The proposed work is an enhancement in 4-way handshake process for more robust authentication process. This is done by encryption of message-1 by using effective encryption techniques; message-2 and message-3 will be secured by a cookie packet, encrypted by secret key. The proposed 4-way handshake process is an improvement over the existing 4-way handshake used in IEEE802.11i. To show effectiveness and correctness, various simulations are performed and also compared with existing 4-way handshake technique. The Enhanced 4-Way Handshake shows improvement in terms of average delay time, success ratio, packet drop and throughput. Based on simulation results it has been observed that our proposed approach is more secure and effective authentication mechanism for IEEE802.11i and it is largely unaffected by the presence of hacker

Keywords:

• 4-Way Handshake
• IEEE802.11i
• Authentication
• DoS Attack