Denial of Service Attacks on 802.1X Security Protocol

Abstract

Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) are quickly becoming popular in daily life. Users are adopting the latest technology to save time and costs. In addition, WLANs are providing high-speed network access to the users. There are security concerns with WLANs that must be considered when deploying them over critical infrastructure, such as military and administrative government LANs. The IEEE 802.11 wireless standard specifies both an authentication service and encryption protocol, but research has demonstrated that these protocols are severely flawed. The IEEE has established a new work group, the IEEE 802. 11i, to address all the security vulnerabilities of the 802.11 security protocol. The work group proposed using the IEEE 802. 1X Port-Based Network Access Control Standard as an interim measure to meet the security requirements of the WLANs and to maintain the confidentiality, authenticity, and availability of the data until the work group is finished with the new specifications. Using an open-source test-bed for evaluating DoS attacks on WLANs, this research demonstrates four different DoS attacks that verify the weaknesses of the IEEE 802. 1X protocol. Solutions are provided to mitigate the effects of such DoS attacks.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2004
Accession Number
ADA422412

Entities

People

  • Orhan Ozan

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Authentication
  • Computer Access Control
  • Computer Network Security
  • Computer Networks
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Cryptography
  • Denial Of Service Attack
  • Electronic Mail
  • Intrusion Detectors
  • Local Area Networks
  • Network Protocols
  • Network Science
  • Operating Systems
  • Security Protocols
  • Web Browsers

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Networking
  • Software Engineering
  • Strategic Security Studies