User:Brock.e.rogers/sandbox

Evolution of Wireless Security

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) working group was created in September 1990 with the task of creating security standards for emerging wireless technologies. Since its creation the IEEE 802.11 WLAN working group has recommended several different security techniques and standards to combat the evolving sophistication of attacks.

MAC Filtering

Filtering of a network interface card's (NIC)media access control (MAC) address was an early attempt at adding to WLAN security. While it can be an effective deterrent for those with very little networking knowledge it does little to stop even the most amateur of attackers. The problem is that the MAC address is visible in plain text in the wireless packets and therefore can be spoofed onto any machine wishing to gain access to the network.

Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)

The 802.11 working group created its first WLAN security standard, WEP, in 1997. WEP used a shared key to authenticate users and permit access to the WLAN. Early on the WEP key used a 64 bit key to encrypt the data stream and make it unreadable by people. Today keys are 128, 156, and 256 bits. By 2001 software was readily available that could crack WEP in about ten minutes. Today the crack time is down to just a couple minutes.

Wireless Protected Access (WPA)

The vulnerability of WEP lead to the Wi-Fi Alliance stepping in with WPA to fill the security void while the IEEE 802.11 working group worked on their own solution. The big draw towards WPA was the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) which provided an encryption key that changed with every packet, thus adding more security. The WPA security protocol was easily added to NIC cards through a firmware upgrade and was considered the main standard by 2002. It would remain the most secure protocol until two years later when 802.11i was finally finished.

802.11i (WPA2)

802.11i was introduced by the IEEE 802.11 working group in 2004. It used the strongest encryption methods available at the time known as AES-CCMP encryption. AES-CCMP uses 128-bit keys and allows for automatically changing keys in order to keep things fresh. The Wi-Fi Alliance commonly refers to the 802.11i standard as WPA2, even though it was created by a different entity. Many companies refrained from the conversion to WPA2 until a partial crack method for WPA appeared in 2009.