War Driving and WLAN Security Issues—Attacks, Security Design and Remedies

ABSTRACT

Mobile computing is evolving at a rapid pace with 802.11 networks; the fuzzy boundaries make it easy for intruders to intercept the radio signals. War driving was performed along highways; the resulting packet analysis is explained to show how easy some security attacks can be. An elaboration is done on a host of wireless security attacks that leads to the discussion of secure wireless network design, along with some network security simulation. The paper concludes with a list of security recommendations.

KEYWORDS:

• packet capture
• security threats
• war driving
• network design

Notes

¹There appears to be no legal sanctions in the author's country that makes interception of wireless signals illegal.

²It is unfortunate that the header of the wireless packets can reveal some interesting information, as it is transmitted in the clear.