Assignment Task
Introduction
Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are convenient, cheap and easy to install. They allow for mobility around the office and deliver great flexibility. However, all WLANs potentially have major flaws and weaknesses.This guide describes the potential security issues in wireless networks that may affect your business – for example, the denial of service attacks, spoofing and session hijacking. Eavesdropping is also a concern with wireless transmission – others ‘listening in’ on your business activities and using this information against you, eg to undercut your prices. Unless you set up suitable security measures, your corporate WLAN may be insecure. It may even compromise your business. To protect it, it is important to set up your wireless network components correctly, choose the right Wi-Fi protected access (WPA) and use the appropriate wireless networking standards.
The wireless network is a network set up by using radio signal frequency to communicate among computers and other network devices, sometimes it is referred as Wi-Fi network or WLAN and it is getting popular nowadays due to easy setup feature and no cabling involved. Wireless Internet access technology is being gradually arrayed in both office and public surroundings, as well as by the Internet users at home. With continual advances in technology, coupled with increasing price/performance advantages, wireless accessibility is being deployed increasingly in office and public environments. This new era of technological flexibility can also provide an open invitation for network security threats not only in the corporate world, but also the privacy of users at home. When the decision is made to move from a physically connected architecture to wireless LAN technology, component accessibility and signal propagation provided convenient opportunities for unauthorized users to introduce malicious activities, intercept data transmission, or passively eavesdrop upon the infrastructure of a system.
In Figure 1, both wired network and wireless network get data to be communicated among the laptops/computers or any mobile devices from the router, for wireless network the wireless access point provide data access for laptops but for wired network the router provides data access to laptops/computers. Both (wired network and wireless network) require resolute confidentiality with no violations to system integrity, while continuing to sustain access to information and related systems for authorized users. The pervasive availability and wide usage of wireless networks with different kinds of topologies, techniques and protocol suites have brought with them a need to improve security mechanisms [2]. Wireless security is the prevention of unauthorized access or damage to computers using wireless networks. The most common types of wireless security are Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) [3]. It requires different thinking from wired network security as it gives hackers or attackers an easy transport medium access and this access increases the threat that any security architecture must deal with. Wireless security on the IEEE 802.11 standard has received a lot of criticism, because it is has got several design errors and security problems. In dealing with wireless network security availability, authenticity, integrity, confidentiality and nonrepudiation are very important aspects to deal with because any effective wireless network security must make sure [4]: Availability: guarantees that the desired network services are available whenever they are expected, in spite of attacks. Systems that ensure availability seek to combat denial of service and energy starvation attacks. Authenticity: guarantees communication from one node to another is genuine. It ensures that a malicious node cannot masquerade as a trusted network node. Confidentiality: is a core security primitive for ad hoc networks, It guarantees that a given message cannot be understood by anyone else than its (their) desired recipient(s). Integrity: denotes the authenticity of data sent from one node to another. That is, it guarantees that a message sent from node A to node B was not modified by a malicious node, C, during transmission. Non-repudiation: guarantees that the origin of the message is legitimate. i.e when one node receives a false message from another, nonrepudiation allows the former to accuse the later of sending the false message and enables all other nodes to know about it. According to the above security problems, the main objective of this research was to identify principle elements related to wireless network security and provide an overview of potential threats, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures (solutions) associated with wireless network security.
Wireless network components
Wireless local area networks (WLANs) use the same basic structure of components as the traditional Ethernet-wired networks. However, instead of cables, WLANs use infrared or radio frequency technology to transmit data around the network.
Businesses typically use wireless networks within a single building, or as a building-to-building connection, often as an extension to a wired network.
What are the main components of a wireless network?
The physical WLAN architecture is fairly simple. The basic components of WLAN are typically:
- Wireless access points
- Network interface cards (NICs) or client adaptors
You can use other components, such as wireless bridges and repeaters, to extend the reach of your network.