15 November Wireless Security Issues Cheyenne Hollow Horn SFS Presentation 2004
15 November Presentation Outline WEP WPA TKIP Optical Wireless Solution
15 November WEP Wired Equivalency Protocol First WLAN security protocol. Four major categories of flaws: –No forgery protection. –No protection against replays. –RC4 encryption exposes protocol to weak key attacks. –Encrypted data can be decrypted with out learning encryption key.
15 November WEP Encryption Each packet is encrypted with a RC4 cipher stream. The key uses an initialization vector and 40 – bit WEP key. The data is bitwise XOR-ed with the key. IV chosen by sender and sent with each packet.
15 November WEP Encryption Flaws Key management and size IV is too small Authentication messages can be easily forged.
15 November WPA Wi-Fi Protected Access Wi-Fi Alliance created early 2003 Based on IEEE i WPA specifies user authentication, better encryption, and data validation.
15 November WPA Authentication: –Uses 802.1x protocol –802.1x based on EAP –Alternate PSK Data encryption: –TKIP Data validity: –MIC
15 November TKIP Cryptographic message integrity code, MIC New IV sequencing discipline Pre-packet key mixing function Rekeying mechanism
15 November MIC Three components: –Authentication key K –Tagging function –Verification predicate The tagging function takes key and message and generates tag. Receiver uses K, M, and T.
15 November IV Sequence Enforcement When transmission begins sender and receiver initialize to zero The IV field used as packet sequence number. Receiver is required to increment sequence number If out of order packet is discarded
15 November Key Mixing Two phases Phase I: –Temporal key and MAC address of local wireless interface used. Phase II: –Uses tiny cipher to “encrypt” each packet.
15 November Rekeying Delivers fresh keys consumed by the various TKIP algorithms Eliminates attacks by guessing static keys.
15 November Optical Wireless Communications Layer 1 advantage LIGHTPOINTE Works near infrared wavelengths Information relayed at several hundred THz Narrow beam, hard to intercept signal
15 November More on Optical Wireless Military organizations use this Blocking the beam stops transmission Utilizes WPA to have a stronger system
15 November Questions?