Security threats to the MAC-layer in wireless networks

Medium access protocol;Wireless networks;Security

Choi, Jihyuk

关键词: Medium access protocol;    Wireless networks;    Security;   

Others  :  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/34282/Choi_Jihyuk.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

美国|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Medium access control (MAC) protocol security is important in wireless networks due to the lack of physical access control that normally exists in wired networks in the form of connecting a cable. Most efforts in standards organizations and academic research focus on the requirements of confidentiality and authentication. These approaches to wireless MAC-layer security often ignore two other threats to security: attacks against availability and incorrect implementation of MAC protocol and driver routines. The former can prevent a user from communicating at all, whereas the latter can have consequences ranging from dropped packets to complete host compromise.This dissertation comprehensively investigates the threats against wireless MAC protocols: being uncooperative, denial-of-service (DoS), sniffing, man-in-the-middle (MITM), and fuzzing. I provide a mathematical model to understand how network parameters impact the uncooperative carrier-sense-misbehaving attackers. Next, this dissertation shows a novel DoS attack that targets queuing behavior of access points by exploiting some factors of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol. Further, I propose a scheme that establishes a wireless connection that is secure against sniffing and MITM between a client device and an access point in IEEE 802.11 hotspots. Finally, I propose MAC-layer threats including fuzzing in IEEE 802.16e mobile WiMAX networks.