Basic security measures for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks

Abstract

This article presents a tutorial/discussion of three commonly-used IEEE 802.11 wireless network security standards: WEP, WPA and WPA2. A detailed analysis of the RC4 algorithm supporting WEP is presented, including its vulnera-bilities. The WPA and WPA2 encryption protocols’ most relevant aspects and technical characteristics are reviewed for a comparative analysis of the three standards in terms of the security they provide. Special attention has been paid to WEP encryption by using an educational simulation tool written in C++ Builder for facilitating the unders-tanding of this protocol at academic level. Two practical cases of wireless security configurations using Cisco net-working equipment are also presented: configuring and enabling WPA-Personal and WPA2-Personal (these being security options used by TKIP and AES, respectively).

Keywords

• 802.11i
• 802.1x
• CCMP
• TKIP
• WEP
• WLAN
• WPA
• WPA2