Wireless LAN Attacks Explained

Intro Wireless LANs are popping up here, there and everywhere. Many businesses are implementing wireless LAN segments on their internal LANs because it is easy to setup and obviously there are no wires to run. Wireless allows users with laptops and other mobile devices to roam the enterprise and not have to plug in wherever they go. As part of the process of implementing a wireless network segment on the corporate LAN of the company that I presently work for, I did some research and testing of wireless security. This white paper outlines how hackers are exploiting vulnerabilities in 802.11 wireless LANs and the widely available wireless hacking tools that are used.

Too often people think that because the setup of a wireless segment is literally plug and go that everything is functioning properly and securely. Wireless is a virtual playground for hackers, the technology is still quite new, most admins are not anywhere near up to speed on it and security protocols and procedures are still being developed; giving quick-learning hackers the edge.

Any wireless access point attached to a network segment is essentially bridging the internal network to the surrounding area directly, without any firewall protection. After only installing one low-budget wireless access point (WAP) I could get access to the LAN anywhere in the shop, the office and in the parking lot!! I don't know how many square feet of shop floor and office space we have, but it isn't small. I was getting 15% connection strength sitting in my car in the parking lot!! Without proper security measures for authentication, any laptop with a wireless card can access the network or stealthy listen in on all network traffic across that access point from any area within the WAPs range.

The link for this article located at SecurityProtocols is no longer available.