Question

Wireless LANs have been in the news in 2017 due to WIFI Vulnerability.

1. Give an example of a hardware-based WLAN attack?

Answer 1

Wireless LAN or WLAN is the common network technology also known as WiFi that enables the user to connect to a network using a mobile device via a Wireless Access Point (WAP)

WLAN is widely used around the globe for providing wireless internet access to the users in the home and public networks like restaurant, hotels, and many other scenarios.

Also with its easiness and flexibility to access a WLAN, it has become vulnerable for the same.

Many different types of attacks on WLAN are reported all around the world including

• Wifi Eavesdropping: intercept the content and webpages that are accessed by the users of WLAN
• Packet Sniffing: The wireless traffic is captured by the attacker and those without encryption can be easily available to the attacker.
• Password brute-force attack: The WLAN network can be protected using passwords but attackers use brute-force mechanism to crack the passwords and enter the network.

The advanced attacks make use of hardware components to perform the attack one good example for such an attack is Rouge access point

• The rogue access point is an unauthorized access point installed on the network by the attacker.
• The intention of the attacker by using a rogue access point is to make use of the rogue access point to attacks
• Rogue access points are configured by the attacker with a poor level of security
• rogue access points give the potential of conducting attack for the unouthorized parties.
• which means, they are open to performing various attacks like Denial of service attack and Packet sniffing

One effective method to prevent rogue access points is to implement IPS/IDS (Intrusion prevention/detection System) in the network so that any unauthorized device or traffic would be detected and blocked by the system making the network secured