Hacking Techniques in Wireless Networks

Prabhaker Mateti
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Wright State University
Dayton, Ohio 45435-0001

This article is scheduled to appear in “The Handbook of Information Security”, Hossein

Bidgoli (Editor-in-Chief), John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005.
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................2
2. Wireless LAN Overview..............................................................................................3
2.1 Stations and Access Points..............................................................................3
2.2 Channels..........................................................................................................4
2.3 WEP.................................................................................................................4
2.4 Infrastructure and Ad Hoc Modes...................................................................4
2.5 Frames..............................................................................................................4
2.6 Authentication..................................................................................................5
2.7 Association......................................................................................................6
3. Wireless Network Sniffing...........................................................................................7
3.1 Passive Scanning.............................................................................................7
3.2 Detection of SSID............................................................................................8
3.3 Collecting the MAC Addresses.......................................................................8
3.4 Collecting the Frames for Cracking WEP.......................................................8
3.5 Detection of the Sniffers..................................................................................9
4. Wireless Spoofing......................................................................................................10
4.1 MAC Address Spoofing................................................................................10
4.2 IP spoofing.....................................................................................................10
4.3 Frame Spoofing.............................................................................................11
5. Wireless Network Probing.........................................................................................11
5.1 Detection of SSID..........................................................................................12
5.2 Detection of APs and stations........................................................................12
5.3 Detection of Probing......................................................................................12
6. AP Weaknesses..........................................................................................................12
6.1 Configuration.................................................................................................12
6.2 Defeating MAC Filtering...............................................................................13
6.3 Rogue AP.......................................................................................................13
6.4 Trojan AP.......................................................................................................13
6.5 Equipment Flaws...........................................................................................13
7. Denial of Service........................................................................................................14
7.1 Jamming the Air Waves.................................................................................14
7.2 Flooding with Associations...........................................................................14
7.3 Forged Dissociation.......................................................................................14
7.4 Forged Deauthentication................................................................................15
7.5 Power Saving.................................................................................................15

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8. Man-in-the-Middle Attacks........................................................................................15
8.1 Wireless MITM.............................................................................................16
8.2 ARP Poisoning...............................................................................................16
8.3 Session Hijacking..........................................................................................17
9. War Driving................................................................................................................17
9.1 War chalking..................................................................................................17
9.2 Typical Equipment.........................................................................................18
10. Wireless Security Best Practices...........................................................................19
10.1 Location of the APs.......................................................................................19
10.2 Proper Configuration.....................................................................................19
10.3 Secure Protocols............................................................................................20
10.4 Wireless IDS..................................................................................................20
10.5 Wireless Auditing..........................................................................................21
10.6 Newer Standards and Protocols.....................................................................21
10.7 Software Tools...............................................................................................21
11. Conclusion.............................................................................................................22
GLOSSARY......................................................................................................................23
Cross References...............................................................................................................24
References..........................................................................................................................24
Further Reading.................................................................................................................25

Key Words
IEEE 802.11, wireless spoofing, cracking WEP, forged Deauthentication, rogue/ Trojan
access points, session hijacking, war driving.

Abstract
This article describes IEEE 802.11-specific hacking techniques that attackers have used,
and suggests various defensive measures. We describe sniffing, spoofing and probing in
the context of wireless networks. We describe how SSIDs can be determined, how a
sufficiently large number of frames can be collected so that WEP can be cracked. We
show how easy it is to cause denial-of-service through jamming and through forged
disassociations and deauthentications. We also explain three man-in-the-middle attacks
using wireless networks. We give a list of selected open-source tools. We summarize
the activity known as war driving. We conclude the article with several
recommendations that will help improve security at a wireless deployment site.

1. Introduction
Wireless networks broadcast their packets using radio frequency or optical wavelengths. 
A modern laptop computer can listen in.  Worse, an attacker can manufacture new
packets on the fly and persuade wireless stations to accept his packets as legitimate. 

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We use the term hacking as described below.

hacker n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys
exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as
opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who
programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just
theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A
person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one
who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5
are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any
kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual
challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A
malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence
`password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker.

From The Jargon Dictionary http://info.astrian.net/jargon/

This article describes IEEE 802.11-specific hacking techniques that attackers have used,
and suggests various defensive measures. It is not an overview of security features
proposed in WPA or IEEE 802.11i. We do not consider legal implications, or the intent
behind such hacking, whether malevolent or benevolent. The article’s focus is in
describing techniques, methods, analyses and uses in ways unintended by the designers
of IEEE 802.11.

2. Wireless LAN Overview

In this section, we give a brief overview of wireless LAN (WLAN) while emphasizing
the features that help an attacker.  We assume that the reader is familiar with the TCP/IP
suite (see, e.g., [Mateti 2003]).

IEEE 802.11 refers to a family of specifications (www.ieee802.org/11/) developed by the

IEEE for over-the-air interface between a wireless client and an AP or between two
wireless clients.  To be called 802.11 devices, they must conform to the Medium Access
Control (MAC) and Physical Layer specifications. The IEEE 802.11 standard covers the
Physical (Layer 1) and Data Link (Layer 2) layers of the OSI Model. In this article, we
are mainly concerned with the MAC layer and not the variations of the physical layer
known as 802.11a/b/g.

2.1 Stations and Access Points

A wireless network interface card (adapter) is a device, called a station, providing the
network physical layer over a radio link to another station. An access point (AP) is a
station that provides frame distribution service to stations associated with it.  The AP
itself is typically connected by wire to a LAN.

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The station and AP each contain a network interface that has a Media Access Control
(MAC) address, just as wired network cards do. This address is a world-wide-unique 48-
bit number, assigned to it at the time of manufacture. The 48-bit address is often
represented as a string of six octets separated by colons (e.g., 00:02:2D:17:B9:E8) or
hyphens (e.g., 00-02-2D-17-B9-E8). While the MAC address as assigned by the
manufacturer is printed on the device, the address can be changed in software.

Each AP has a 0 to 32 byte long Service Set Identifier (SSID) that is also commonly
called a network name.  The SSID is used to segment the airwaves for usage. If two
wireless networks are physically close, the SSIDs label the respective networks, and
allow the components of one network to ignore those of the other. SSIDs can also be
mapped to virtual LANs; thus, some APs support multiple SSIDs. Unlike fully qualified
host names (e.g., gamma.cs.wright.edu), SSIDs are not registered, and it is possible that
two unrelated networks use the same SSID.

2.2 Channels
The stations communicate with each other using radio frequencies between 2.4 GHz and
2.5 GHz. Neighboring channels are only 5 MHz apart. Two wireless networks using
neighboring channels may interfere with each other.

2.3 WEP
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is a shared-secret key encryption system used to
encrypt packets transmitted between a station and an AP.  The WEP algorithm is
intended to protect wireless communication from eavesdropping. A secondary function of
WEP is to prevent unauthorized access to a wireless network.  WEP encrypts the payload
of data packets.  Management and control frames are always transmitted in the clear.
WEP uses the RC4 encryption algorithm.  The shared-secret key is either 40 or 104 bits
long.   The key is chosen by the system administrator.  This key must be shared among all
the stations and the AP using mechanisms that are not specified in the IEEE 802.11. 

2.4 Infrastructure and Ad Hoc Modes

A wireless network operates in one of two modes. In the ad hoc mode, each station is a
peer to the other stations and communicates directly with other stations within the
network.   No AP is involved.  All stations can send Beacon and Probe frames. The ad
hoc mode stations form an Independent Basic Service Set (IBSS).

A station in the infrastructure mode communicates only with an AP. Basic Service Set
(BSS) is a set of stations that are logically associated with each other and controlled by a
single AP. Together they operate as a fully connected wireless network. The BSSID is a
48-bit number of the same format as a MAC address. This field uniquely identifies each
BSS. The value of this field is the MAC address of the AP.

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2.5 Frames
Both the station and AP radiate and gather 802.11 frames as needed.  The format of
frames is illustrated below. Most of the frames contain IP packets.  The other frames are
for the management and control of the wireless connection.

Figure 1 An IEEE 802.11 Frame

There are three classes of frames.   The management frames establish and maintain
communications.  These are of Association request, Association response, Reassociation
request, Reassociation response, Probe request, Probe response, Beacon, Announcement
traffic indication message, Disassociation, Authentication, Deauthentication types.  The
SSID is part of several of the management frames. Management messages are always
sent in the clear, even when link encryption (WEP or WPA) is used, so the SSID is
visible to anyone who can intercept these frames.

The control frames help in the delivery of data.

The data frames encapsulate the OSI Network Layer packets. These contain the source
and destination MAC address, the BSSID, and the TCP/IP datagram. The payload part of
the datagram is WEP-encrypted.

2.6 Authentication
Authentication is the process of proving identity of a station to another station or AP.  In
the open system authentication, all stations are authenticated without any checking.  A
station A sends an Authentication management frame that contains the identity of A, to
station B.  Station B replies with a frame that indicates recognition, addressed to A.  In
the closed network architecture, the stations must know the SSID of the AP in order to
connect to the AP.  The shared key authentication uses a standard challenge and response
along with a shared secret key.

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Figure 2: States and Services

2.7 Association
Data can be exchanged between the station and AP only after a station is associated with
an AP in the infrastructure mode or with another station in the ad hoc mode.  All the APs
transmit Beacon frames a few times each second that contain the SSID, time, capabilities,
supported rates, and other information.  Stations can chose to associate with an AP based
on the signal strength etc. of each AP.   Stations can have a null SSID that is considered
to match all SSIDs.

The association is a two-step process. A station that is currently unauthenticated and

unassociated listens for Beacon frames. The station selects a BSS to join. The station and
the AP mutually authenticate themselves by exchanging Authentication management
frames.  The client is now authenticated, but unassociated. In the second step, the station
sends an Association Request frame, to which the AP responds with an Association
Response frame that includes an Association ID to the station.  The station is now
authenticated and associated.

A station can be authenticated with several APs at the same time, but associated with at
most one AP at any time.  Association implies authentication.  There is no state where a
station is associated but not authenticated.

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3. Wireless Network Sniffing
Sniffing is eavesdropping on the network. A (packet) sniffer is a program that intercepts
and decodes network traffic broadcast through a medium. Sniffing is the act by a
machine S of making copies of a network packet sent by machine A intended to be
received by machine B.  Such sniffing, strictly speaking, is not a TCP/IP problem, but it
is enabled by the choice of broadcast media, Ethernet and 802.11, as the physical and
data link layers.

Sniffing has long been a reconnaissance technique used in wired networks.  Attackers
sniff the frames necessary to enable the exploits described in later sections.  Sniffing is
the underlying technique used in tools that monitor the health of a network. Sniffing can
also help find the easy kill as in scanning for open access points that allow anyone to
connect, or capturing the passwords used in a connection session that does not even use
WEP, or in telnet, rlogin and ftp connections. 

It is easier to sniff wireless networks than wired ones. It is easy to sniff the wireless
traffic of a building by setting shop in a car parked in a lot as far away as a mile, or while
driving around the block. In a wired network, the attacker must find a way to install a
sniffer on one or more of the hosts in the targeted subnet.  Depending on the equipment
used in a LAN, a sniffer needs to be run either on the victim machine whose traffic is of
interest or on some other host in the same subnet as the victim.  An attacker at large on
the Internet has other techniques that make it possible to install a sniffer remotely on the
victim machine.

3.1 Passive Scanning

Scanning is the act of sniffing by tuning to various radio channels of the devices. A
passive network scanner instructs the wireless card to listen to each channel for a few
messages.  This does not reveal the presence of the scanner.

An attacker can passively scan without transmitting at all.  Several modes of a station
permit this. There is a mode called RF monitor mode that allows every frame appearing
on a channel to be copied as the radio of the station tunes to various channels.  This is
analogous to placing a wired Ethernet card in promiscuous mode. This mode is not
enabled by default.  Some wireless cards on the market today have disabled this feature in
the default firmware.  One can buy wireless cards whose firmware and corresponding
driver software together permit reading of all raw 802.11 frames.   A station in monitor
mode can capture packets without associating with an AP or ad-hoc network.  The so-
called promiscuous mode allows the capture of all wireless packets of an associated
network. In this mode, packets cannot be read until authentication and association are
completed.

An example sniffer is Kismet (http://www.kismetwireless.net).   An example wireless

card that permits RF monitor modes is Cisco Aironet AIR-PCM342.

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3.2 Detection of SSID
The attacker can discover the SSID of a network usually by passive scanning because the
SSID occurs in the following frame types: Beacon, Probe Requests, Probe Responses,
Association Requests, and Reassociation Requests. Recall that management frames are
always in the clear, even when WEP is enabled.

On a number of APs, it is possible to configure so that the SSID transmitted in the

Beacon frames is masked, or even turn off Beacons altogether.  The SSID shown in the
Beacon frames is set to null in the hope of making the WLAN invisible unless a client
already knows the correct SSID.  In such a case, a station wishing to join a WLAN begins
the association process by sending Probe Requests since it could not detect any APs via
Beacons that match its SSID.

If the Beacons are not turned off, and the SSID in them is not set to null, an attacker
obtains the SSID included in the Beacon frame by passive scanning.

When the Beacon displays a null SSID, there are two possibilities.  Eventually, an
Associate Request may appear from a legitimate station that already has a correct SSID. 
To such a request, there will be an Associate Response frame from the AP.  Both frames
will contain the SSID in the clear, and the attacker sniffs these.  If the station wishes to
join any available AP, it sends Probe Requests on all channels, and listens for Probe
Responses that contain the SSIDs of the APs.  The station considers all Probe Responses,
just as it would have with the non-empty SSID Beacon frames, to select an AP. Normal
association then begins.  The attacker waits to sniff these Probe Responses and extract the
SSIDs.

If Beacon transmission is disabled, the attacker has two choices.  The attacker can keep
sniffing waiting for a voluntary Associate Request to appear from a legitimate station that
already has a correct SSID and sniff the SSID as described above.  The attacker can also
chose to actively probe by injecting frames that he constructs, and then sniffs the
response as described in a later section.

When the above methods fail, SSID discovery is done by active scanning (see Section 5).

3.3 Collecting the MAC Addresses

The attacker gathers legitimate MAC addresses for use later in constructing spoofed
frames. The source and destination MAC addresses are always in the clear in all the
frames.  There are two reasons why an attacker would collect MAC addresses of stations
and APs participating in a wireless network.  (1) The attacker wishes to use these values
in spoofed frames so that his station or AP is not identified. (2) The targeted AP may be
controlling access by filtering out frames with MAC addresses that were not registered.

3.4 Collecting the Frames for Cracking WEP

8
The goal of an attacker is to discover the WEP shared-secret key.  Often, the shared key
can be discovered by guesswork based on a certain amount of social engineering
regarding the administrator who configures the wireless LAN and all its users.  Some
client software stores the WEP keys in the operating system registry or initialization
scripts.  In the following, we assume that the attacker was unsuccessful in obtaining the
key in this manner.  The attacker then employs systematic procedures in cracking the
WEP.  For this purpose, a large number (millions) of frames need to be collected because
of the way WEP works.

The wireless device generates on the fly an Initialization Vector (IV) of 24-bits.  Adding
these bits to the shared-secret key of either 40 or 104 bits, we often speak of 64-, or 128-
bit encryption. WEP generates a pseudo-random key stream from the shared secret key
and the IV. The CRC-32 checksum of the plain text, known as the Integrity Check (IC)
field, is appended to the data to be sent.  It is then exclusive-ORed with the pseudo-
random key stream to produce the cipher text.   The IV is appended in the clear to the
cipher text and transmitted. The receiver extracts the IV, uses the secret key to re-
generate the random key stream, and exclusive-ORs the received cipher text to yield the
original plaintext.

Certain cards are so simplistic that they start their IV as 0 and increment it by 1 for each
frame, resetting in between for some events. Even the better cards generate weak IVs
from which the first few bytes of the shared key can be computed after statistical
analyses. Some implementations generate fewer mathematically weak vectors than
others do. 

The attacker sniffs a large number of frames from a single BSS.  These frames all use the
same key.  The mathematics behind the systematic computation of the secret shared key
from a collection of cipher text extracted from these frames is described elsewhere in this
volume.  What is needed however is a collection of frames that were encrypted using
“mathematically-weak” IVs. The number of encrypted frames that were mathematically
weak is a small percentage of all frames.  In a collection of a million frames, there may
only be a hundred mathematically weak frames.  It is conceivable that the collection may
take a few hours to several days depending on how busy the WLAN is.

Given a sufficient number of mathematically weak frames, the systematic computation

that exposes the bytes of the secret key is intensive.  However, an attacker can employ
powerful computers.  On an average PC, this may take a few seconds to hours.  The
storage of the large numbers of frames is in the several hundred-mega bytes to a few giga
bytes range.

An example of a WEP cracking tool is AirSnort ( http://airsnort.shmoo.com ).

3.5 Detection of the Sniffers

Detecting the presence of a wireless sniffer, who remains radio-silent, through network
security measures is virtually impossible.  Once the attacker begins probing (i.e., by

9
injecting packets), the presence and the coordinates of the wireless device can be
detected.

4. Wireless Spoofing
There are well-known attack techniques known as spoofing in both wired and wireless
networks.  The attacker constructs frames by filling selected fields that contain addresses
or identifiers with legitimate looking but non-existent values, or with values that belong
to others.  The attacker would have collected these legitimate values through sniffing.

4.1 MAC Address Spoofing

The attacker generally desires to be hidden.  But the probing activity injects frames that
are observable by system administrators.  The attacker fills the Sender MAC Address
field of the injected frames with a spoofed value so that his equipment is not identified.

Typical APs control access by permitting only those stations with known MAC
addresses.  Either the attacker has to compromise a computer system that has a station, or
he spoofs with legitimate MAC addresses in frames that he manufactures.  MAC
addresses are assigned at the time of manufacture, but setting the MAC address of a
wireless card or AP to an arbitrary chosen value is a simple matter of invoking an
appropriate software tool that engages in a dialog with the user and accepts values.  Such
tools are routinely included when a station or AP is purchased.  The attacker, however,
changes the MAC address programmatically, sends several frames with that address, and
repeats this with another MAC address.  In a period of a second, this can happen several
thousand times.

When an AP is not filtering MAC addresses, there is no need for the attacker to use
legitimate MAC addresses.   However, in certain attacks, the attacker needs to have a
large number of MAC addresses than he could collect by sniffing.  Random MAC
addresses are generated.  However, not every random sequence of six bytes is a MAC
address.  The IEEE assigns globally the first three bytes, and the manufacturer chooses
the last three bytes.  The officially assigned numbers are publicly available.  The attacker
generates a random MAC address by selecting an IEEE-assigned three bytes appended
with an additional three random bytes.

4.2 IP spoofing
Replacing the true IP address of the sender (or, in rare cases, the destination) with a
different address is known as IP spoofing.   This is a necessary operation in many attacks.

The IP layer of the OS simply trusts that the source address, as it appears in an IP packet
is valid.  It assumes that the packet it received indeed was sent by the host officially
assigned that source address. Because the IP layer of the OS normally adds these IP
addresses to a data packet, a spoofer must circumvent the IP layer and talk directly to the

10
raw network device.  Note that the attacker’s machine cannot simply be assigned the IP
address of another host X using ifconfig or a similar configuration tool. Other hosts, as
well as X, will discover (through ARP, for example) that there are two machines with the
same IP address.

IP spoofing is an integral part of many attacks.  For example, an attacker can silence a
host A from sending further packets to B by sending a spoofed packet announcing a
window size of zero to A as though it originated from B.

4.3 Frame Spoofing

The attacker will inject frames that are valid by 802.11 specifications, but whose content
is carefully spoofed as described above.

Frames themselves are not authenticated in 802.11 networks.  So when a frame has a
spoofed source address, it cannot be detected unless the address is wholly bogus.    If the
frame to be spoofed is a management or control frame, there is no encryption to deal
with.  If it is a data frame, perhaps as part of an on-going MITM attack, the data payload
must be properly encrypted.

Construction of the byte stream that constitutes a spoofed frame is a programming matter
once the attacker has gathered the needed information through sniffing and probing.  
There are software libraries that ease this task.  Examples of such libraries are libpcap
(sourceforge.net/projects/libpcap/), libnet (libnet.sourceforge.net/), libdnet (libdnet.
sourceforge.net/)  and libradiate (www.packetfactory.net/projects/libradiate/ ).

The difficulty here is not in the construction of the contents of the frame, but in getting, it
radiated (transmitted) by the station or an AP.  This requires control over the firmware
and driver of the wireless card that may sanitize certain fields of a frame.  Therefore, the
attacker selects his equipment carefully.  Currently, there are off-the-shelf wireless cards
that can be manipulated.  In addition, the construction of special purpose wireless cards is
within the reach of a resourceful attacker.

5. Wireless Network Probing

Even though the attacker gathers considerable amount of information regarding a
wireless network through sniffing, without revealing his wireless presence at all, there are
pieces that may still be missing.  The attacker then sends artificially constructed packets
to a target that trigger useful responses.  This activity is known as probing or active
scanning.

The target may discover that it is being probed, it might even be a honey pot
(www.honeynet.org/) target carefully constructed to trap the attacker.  The attacker would
try to minimize this risk.

11
5.1 Detection of SSID
Detection of SSID is often possible by simply sniffing Beacon frames as describe in a
previous section.

If Beacon transmission is disabled, and the  attacker does not wish to patiently wait for a
voluntary Associate Request to appear from a legitimate station that already has a correct
SSID, or Probe Requests from legitimate stations, he will resort to probing by injecting a
Probe Request frame that contains a spoofed source MAC address.  The Probe Response
frame from the APs will contain, in the clear, the SSID and other information similar to
that in the Beacon frames were they enabled. The attacker sniffs these Probe Responses
and extracts the SSIDs.

Some models of APs have an option to disable responding to Probe Requests that do not
contain the correct SSID. In this case, the attacker determines a station associated with
the AP, and sends the station a forged Disassociation frame where the source MAC
address is set to that of the AP. The station will send a Reassociation Request that
exposes the SSID.

5.2 Detection of APs and stations

Every AP is a station, so SSIDs, MAC addresses are gathered as described above.

Certain bits in the frames identify that the frame is from an AP.  If we assume that WEP
is either disabled or cracked, the attacker can also gather the IP addresses of the AP and
the stations.

5.3 Detection of Probing

Detection of probing is possible.  The frames that an attacker injects can also be heard by
the intrusion detection systems (IDS) of hardened wireless LAN.  There is GPS-enabled
equipment that can identify the physical coordinates of a wireless device through which
the probe frames are being transmitted.

6. AP Weaknesses
APs have weaknesses that are both due to design mistakes and user interfaces that
promote weak passwords, etc.  It has been demonstrated by many publicly conducted
war-driving efforts (www.worldwidewardrive.org) in major cities around the world that a
large majority of the deployed APs are poorly configured, most with WEP disabled, and
configuration defaults, as set up the manufacturer, untouched.

6.1 Configuration

12
The default WEP keys used are often too trivial. Different APs use different techniques to
convert the user’s key board input into a bit vector.  Usually 5 or 13 ASCII printable
characters are directly mapped by concatenating their ASCII 8-bit codes into a 40-bit or
104-bit WEP key.  A stronger key can be constructed from an input of 26 hexadecimal
digits. It is possible to form an even stronger104 bit WEP key by truncating the MD5
hash of an arbitrary length pass phrase.

6.2 Defeating MAC Filtering

Typical APs permit access to only those stations with known MAC addresses.  This is
easily defeated by the attacker who spoofs his frames with a MAC address that is
registered with the AP from among the ones that he collected through sniffing.  That a
MAC address is registered can be detected by observing the frames from the AP to the
stations.

6.3 Rogue AP
Access points that are installed without proper authorization and verification that overall
security policy is obeyed are called rogue APs.  These are installed and used by valid
users.  Such APs are configured poorly, and attackers will find them.

6.4 Trojan AP
An attacker sets up an AP so that the targeted station receives a stronger signal from it
than what it receives from a legitimate AP.  If WEP is enabled, the attacker would have
already cracked it.  A legitimate user selects the Trojan AP because of the stronger signal,
authenticates and associates.  The Trojan AP is connected to a system that collects the IP
traffic for later analyses.  It then transmits all the frames to a legitimate AP so that the
victim user does not recognize the on-going MITM attack. The attacker can steal the
users password, network access, compromise the user’s system to give himself root
access.  This attack is called the Evil Twin Attack.

It is easy to build a Trojan AP because an AP is a computer system optimized for its

intended application.  A general purpose PC with a wireless card can be turned into a
capable AP.  An example of such software is HostAP (http://hostap.epitest.fi/ ).  Such a
Trojaned AP would be formidable.

6.5 Equipment Flaws

A search on www.securityfocus.com with “access point vulnerabilities” will show that
numerous flaws in equipment from well-known manufacturers are known.  For example,
one such AP crashes when a frame is sent to it that has the spoofed source MAC address
of itself.  Another AP features an embedded TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) server.
By requesting a file named config.img via TFTP, an attacker receives the binary image
of the AP configuration. The image includes the administrator’s password required by the

13
HTTP user interface, the WEP encryption keys, MAC address, and SSID.  Yet another
AP returns the WEP keys, MAC filter list, administrator’s password when sent a UDP
packet to port 27155 containing the string “gstsearch”.  

It is not clear how these flaws were discovered. The following is a likely procedure. 
Most manufacturers design their equipment so that its firmware can be flashed with a
new and improved one in the field.  The firmware images are downloaded from the
manufacturers’ web site.  The CPU used in the APs can be easily recognized, and the
firmware can be systematically disassembled revealing the flaws at the assembly
language level.

Comprehensive lists of such equipment flaws are likely circulating among the attackers.

7. Denial of Service
A denial of service (DoS) occurs when a system is not providing services to authorized
clients because of resource exhaustion by unauthorized clients.  In wireless networks,
DoS attacks are difficult to prevent, difficult to stop an on-going attack and the victim
and its clients may not even detect the attacks. The duration of such DoS may range from
milliseconds to hours.  A DoS attack against an individual station enables session
hijacking.

7.1 Jamming the Air Waves

A number of consumer appliances such as microwave ovens, baby monitors, and cordless
phones operate on the unregulated 2.4GHz radio frequency. An attacker can unleash large
amounts of noise using these devices and jam the airwaves so that the signal to noise
drops so low, that the wireless LAN ceases to function.  The only solution to this is RF
proofing the surrounding environment.

7.2 Flooding with Associations

The AP inserts the data supplied by the station in the Association Request into a table
called the association table that the AP maintains in its memory.  The IEEE 802.11
specifies a maximum value of 2007 concurrent associations to an AP.  The actual size of
this table varies among different models of APs.  When this table overflows, the AP
would refuse further clients.

Having cracked WEP, an attacker authenticates several non-existing stations

using legitimate-looking but randomly generated MAC addresses.  The attacker then
sends a flood of spoofed associate requests so that the association table overflows.

Enabling MAC filtering in the AP will prevent this attack.

7.3 Forged Dissociation

14
The attacker sends a spoofed Disassociation frame where the source MAC address is set
to that of the AP. The station is still authenticated but needs only to reassociate and sends
Reassociation Requests to the AP.  The AP may send a Reassociation Response accepting
the station and the station can then resume sending data. To prevent Reassociation, the
attacker continues to send Disassociation frames for a desired period.

7.4 Forged Deauthentication

The attacker monitors all raw frames collecting the source and destination MAC
addresses to verify that they are among the targeted victims.  When a data or Association
Response frame is observed, the attacker sends a spoofed Deauthentication frame where
the source MAC address is spoofed to that of the AP.  The station is now unassociated
and unauthenticated, and needs to reconnect.  To prevent a reconnection, the attacker
continues to send Deauthentication frames for a desired period.  The attacker may even
rate limit the Deauthentication frames to avoid overloading an already congested
network.

The mischievous packets of Disassociation and Deauthentication are sent directly to the

client, so these will not be logged by the AP or IDS, and neither MAC filtering nor WEP
protection will prevent it.

7.5 Power Saving

Power conservation is important for typical station laptops, so they frequently enter an
802.11 state called Doze.   An attacker can steal packets intended for a station while the
station is in the Doze state.

The 802.11 protocol requires a station to inform the AP through a successful frame
exchange that it wishes to enter the Doze state from the Active state.

Periodically the station awakens and sends a PS-Poll frame to the AP. The AP will
transmit in response the packets that were buffered for the station while it was dozing.
This polling frame can be spoofed by an attacker causing the AP to send the collected
packets and flush its internal buffers. An attacker can repeat these polling messages so
that when the legitimate station periodically awakens and polls, AP will inform that there
are no pending packets.

8. Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack refers to the situation where an attacker on host X
inserts X between all communications between hosts B and C, and neither B nor C is
aware of the presence of X.  All messages sent by B do reach C but via X, and vice
versa.  The attacker can merely observe the communication or modify it before sending it
out.  An MITM attack can break connections that are otherwise secure.  At the TCP level,
SSH and VPN, e.g., are prone to this attack.

15
8.1 Wireless MITM
Assume that station B was authenticated with C, a legitimate AP. Attacker X is a laptop
with two wireless cards. Through one card, he will present X as an AP. Attacker X
sends Deauthentication frames to B using the C’s MAC address as the source, and the
BSSID he has collected. B gets deauthenticated and begins a scan for an AP and may
find X on a channel different from C. There is a race condition between X and C. If B
associates with X, the MITM attack succeeded. X will re-transmit the frames it receives
from B to C, and the frames it receives from C to B after suitable modifications.

The package of tools called AirJack (http://802.11ninja.net/airjack/) includes a program

called monkey_jack that automates the MITM attack. This is programmed well so that
the odds of it winning in the race condition mentioned above are improved.

8.2 ARP Poisoning

ARP cache poisoning is an old problem in wired networks. Wired networks have
deployed mitigating techniques. But, the ARP poisoning technique is re-enabled in the
presence of APs that are connected to a switch/hub along with other wired clients.

ARP is used to determine the MAC address of a device whose IP address is known. The
translation is performed with a table look-up.   The ARP cache accumulates as the host
continues to network.  If the ARP cache does not have an entry for an IP address, the
outgoing IP packet is queued, and an ARP Request packet that effectively requests “If
your IP address matches this target IP address, then please let me know what your
Ethernet address is” is broadcast. The host with the target IP is expected to respond with
an ARP Reply, which contains the MAC address of the host. Once the table is updated
because of receiving this response, all the queued IP packets can now be sent. The entries
in the table expire after a set time in order to account for possible hardware address
changes for the same IP address. This change may have happened, e.g., due to the NIC
being replaced.

Unfortunately, the ARP does not provide for any verification that the responses are from
valid hosts or that it is receiving a spurious response as if it has sent an ARP Request.
ARP poisoning is an attack technique exploiting this lack of verification. It corrupts the
ARP cache that the OS maintains with wrong MAC addresses for some IP addresses. An
attacker accomplishes this by sending an ARP Reply packet that is deliberately
constructed with a “wrong” MAC address.  The ARP is a stateless protocol.  Thus, a
machine receiving an ARP Reply cannot determine if the response is due to a request it
sent or not. 

ARP poisoning is one of the techniques that enables the man-in-the-middle attack. An
attacker on machine X inserts himself between two hosts B and C by (i) poisoning B so
that C’s IP address is associated with X’s MAC address, (ii) poisoning C so that B’s
address is associated with X’s MAC address, and (iii) relaying the packets X receives.

16
The ARP poison attack is applicable to all hosts in a subnet. Most APs act as transparent
MAC layer bridges, and so all stations associated with it are vulnerable. If an access point
is connected directly to a hub or a switch without an intervening router/firewall, then all
hosts connected to that hub or switch are susceptible also. Note that recent devices aimed
at the home consumer market combine a network switch with may be four or five ports,
an AP, a router and a DSL/cable modem connecting to the Internet at large.  Internally,
the AP is connected to the switch. As a result, an attacker on a wireless station can
become a MITM between two wired hosts, one wired one wireless, or both wireless
hosts.

The tool called Ettercap ((http://ettercap.sourceforge.net) is capable of performing ARP

poisoning.

8.3 Session Hijacking

Session hijacking occurs in the context of a “user”, whether human or computer.  The
user has an on-going connection with a server.  Hijacking is said to occur when an
attacker causes the user to lose his connection, and the attacker assumes his identity and
privileges for a period.

An attacker disables temporarily the user’s system, say by a DoS attack or a buffer
overflow exploit.  The attacker then takes the identity of the user.  The attacker now has
all the access that the user has.  When he is done, he stops the DoS attack, and lets the
user resume.  The user may not detect the interruption if the disruption lasts no more than
a couple of seconds.  Such hijacking can be achieved by using forged Disassociation DoS
attack.

Corporate wireless networks are often set up so that the user is directed to an
authentication server when his station attempts a connection with an AP.  After the
authentication, the attacker employs the session hijacking described above using spoofed
MAC addresses.

9. War Driving
Equipped with wireless devices and related tools, and driving around in a vehicle or
parking at interesting places with a goal of discovering easy-to-get-into wireless networks
is known as war driving. War-drivers (http://www.wardrive.net/) define war driving as
“The benign act of locating and logging wireless access points while in motion.”  This
benign act is of course useful to the attackers.

9.1 War chalking

War chalking is the practice of marking sidewalks and walls with special symbols to
indicate that wireless access is nearby so that others do not need to go through the trouble
of the same discovery.  A search on www.google.com with key words “war driving

17
maps” will produce a large number of hits. Yahoo! Maps can show "Wi-fi Hotspots"
near an address you give.

Figure 3: War Chalking Symbols

9.2 Typical Equipment

The typical war driving equipment consists of a laptop computer system or a PDA with a
wireless card, a GPS, and a high-gain antenna.   Typical choice of an operating system is
Linux or FreeBSD where open source sniffers (e.g., Kismet) and WEP crackers (e.g.,
AirSnort) are available.  Similar tools (e.g., NetStumbler) that run on Windows are
available.

War drivers need to be within the range of an AP or station located on the target
network.   The range depends on the transmit output power of the AP and the card, and
the gain of the antenna.  Ordinary access point antennae transmit their signals in all
directions.  Often, these signals reach beyond the physical boundaries of the intended
work area, perhaps to adjacent buildings, floors, and parking lots. With the typical 30mW
wireless cards intended for laptops, the range is about 300 feet, but there are in 2004
wireless cards for laptops on the market that have 200mW. Directional high-gain
antennae and an RF-amplifier can dramatically extend the range.

18
 Figure 4: War Drivers' Equipment

10. Wireless Security Best Practices

This section describes best practices in mitigating the problems described above.

10.1 Location of the APs

APs should be topologically located outside the perimeter firewalls. The wireless
network segments should be treated with the same suspicion as that for the public
Internet. Additionally, it is important to use directional antennae and physically locate
them in such a way that the radio-coverage volume is within the control of the
corporation or home.

10.2 Proper Configuration

Statistics collected by www.worldwidewardrive.org show a distressingly large percentage
of APs left configured with the defaults.

19
Before a wireless device is connected to the rest of the existing network, proper
configuration of the wireless device is necessary.  The APs come with a default SSID,
such as “Default SSID”, “WLAN”, “Wireless”, “Compaq”, “intel”, and “linksys”. The
default passwords for the administrator accounts that configure the AP via a web browser
or SNMP are well known for all manufacturers. A proper configuration should change
these to difficult to predict values.

Note that the SSID serves as a simple handle, not as a password, for a wireless network. 
Unless the default SSID on the AP and stations is changed, SSID broadcasts are disabled,
MAC address filtering is enabled, WEP enabled, an attacker can use the wireless LAN
resources without even sniffing. 

The configuration via web browsing (HTTP) is provided by a simplistic web server built
into an AP.  Often this configuration interface is provided via both wired connections and
wireless connections.  The web server embedded in a typical AP does not contain secure
HTTP, so the password that the administrator submits to the AP can be sniffed.  Web
based configuration via wireless connections should be disabled.

WEP is disabled in some organization because the throughput is then higher.  Enabling
WEP encryption makes it necessary for the attacker intending to WEP-crack to have to
sniff a large number of frames.  The higher the number of bits in the encryption the larger
the number of frames that must be collected is. The physical presence in the radio range
of the equipment for long periods increases the odds of his equipment being detected. 
WEP should be enabled.

The IEEE 802.11 does not describe an automated way of distributing the shared-secret
keys.  In large installations, the manual distribution of keys every time they are changed
is expensive. Nevertheless, the WEP encryption keys should be changed periodically.

10.3 Secure Protocols

If the WEP is disabled, or after the WEP is cracked, the attacker can capture all TCP/IP
packets by radio-silent sniffing for later analyses.  All the wired network attacks are
possible. There are real-time tools that analyze and interpret the TCP/IP data as they
arrive.

All protocols that send passwords and data in the clear must be avoided.  This includes
the rlogin family, telnet, and POP3.  Instead one should use SSH and VPN.

In general, when a wireless segment is involved, one should use end-to-end encryption at
the application level in addition to enabling WEP.

10.4 Wireless IDS

A wireless intrusion detection system (WIDS) is often a self-contained computer system
with specialized hardware and software to detect anomalous behavior. The underlying

20
software techniques are the same hacking techniques described above. The special
wireless hardware is more capable than the commodity wireless card, including the RF
monitor mode, detection of interference, and keeping track of signal-to-noise ratios. It
also includes GPS equipment so that rogue clients and APs can be located. A WIDS
includes one or more listening devices that collect MAC addresses, SSIDs, features
enabled on the stations, transmit speeds, current channel, encryption status, beacon
interval, etc. Its computing engine will be powerful enough that it can dissect frames and
WEP-decrypt into IP and TCP components. These can be fed into TCP/IP related
intrusion detection systems.

Unknown MAC addresses are detected by maintaining a registry of MAC addresses of

known stations and APs. Frequently, a WIDS can detect spoofed known MAC addresses
because the attacker could not control the firmware of the wireless card to insert the
appropriate sequence numbers into the frame.

10.5 Wireless Auditing

Periodically, every wireless network should be audited. Several audit firms provide this
service for a fee. A security audit begins with a well-established security policy. A
policy for wireless networks should include a description of the geographical volume of
coverage. The main goal of an audit is to verify that there are no violations of the policy.
To this end, the typical auditor employs the tools and techniques of an attacker.

10.6 Newer Standards and Protocols

Many improvements in wireless network technology are proposed through proprietary
channels (e.g., Cisco Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol) as well as through
the IEEE. The new IEEE 802.11i (ratified in June 2004) enhances the current 802.11
standard to provide improvements in security. These include Port Based Access Control
for authentication, Temporal Key Integrity Protocol for dynamic changing of encryption
keys, and Wireless Robust Authentication protocol. An interim solution proposed by
vendors is the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), a subset of 802.11i, is only now becoming
available in some products. Time will tell if these can withstand future attacks.

10.7 Software Tools

Below we describe a collection of cost-free tools that can be used both as attack tools and
as audit tools.

 AirJack (http://802.11ninja.net/airjack/) is a collection of wireless card drivers

and related programs. It includes a program called monkey_jack that automates
the MITM attack. Wlan_jack is a DoS tool that accepts a target source and
BSSID to send continuous deauthenticate frames to a single client or an entire
network (broadcast address). Essid_jack sends a disassociate frame to a target

21
 client in order to force the client to reassociate with the network, thereby giving
up the network SSID.
 AirSnort (www.airsnort.shmoo.com ) can break WEP by passively monitoring
transmissions and computing the encryption key when enough packets have been
gathered.

 Ethereal (www.ethereal.com ) is a LAN analyzer, including wireless. One can

interactively browse the capture data, viewing summary and detail information for
all observed wireless traffic.

 FakeAP (ww.blackalchemy.to/project/fakeap) can generate thousands of

counterfeit 802.11b access points.

 HostAP (www.hostap.epitest.fi) converts a station that is based on Intersil's

Prism2/2.5/3 chipset to function as an access point. 

 Kismet (www.kismetwireless.net) is a wireless sniffer and monitor. It passively

monitors wireless traffic and dissects frames to identify SSIDs, MAC addresses,
channels and connection speeds.

 Netstumbler (www.netstumbler.com) is a wireless access point identifier running

on Windows. It listens for SSIDs and sends beacons as probes searching for
access points.

 Prismstumbler (prismstumbler.sourceforge.net/) can find wireless networks. It

constantly switches channels and monitors frames received.

 The Hacker’s Choice organization (www.thc.org) has LEAP Cracker Tool suite
that contains tools to break Cisco LEAP. It also has tools for spoofing
authentication challenge-packets from an AP. The WarDrive is a tool for mapping
a city for wireless networks with a GPS device.

 StumbVerter (www.sonar-security.com/sv.html) is a tool that reads NetStumbler's

collected data files and presents street maps showing the logged WAPs as icons,
whose color and shape indicating WEP mode and signal strength.

 Wellenreiter (http://www.wellenreiter.net/) is a WLAN discovery tool. It uses

brute force to identify low traffic access points while hiding the real MAC address
of the card it uses. It is integrated with GPS.

 WEPcrack (www.wepcrack.sourceforge.net) cracks 802.11 WEP encryption keys

using weaknesses of RC4 key scheduling.

22
11. Conclusion
This article is an introduction to the techniques an attacker would use on wireless
networks.  Regardless of the protocols, wireless networks will remain potentially insecure
because an attacker can listen in without gaining physical access. In addition, the
protocol designs were security-naïve. We have pointed out several existing tools that
implement attack techniques that exploit the weaknesses in the protocol designs. The
integration of wireless networks into existing networks also has been carelessly done.
We pointed out several best practices that can mitigate the insecurities.

GLOSSARY
AP: Access Point. Any entity that has station functionality and provides access to the
distribution services, via the wireless medium for associated stations.

Association Table: The Association table is within an AP and controls the routing of all
packets between the Access Point and the wireless devices in a WLAN.

Basic Service Set: BSS is a collection, or set, of stations that are logically associated
with each other and controlled by a single AP. Together, they operate as a fully
connected wireless network.

Basic Service Set Identifier (BSSID): A 48-bit identifier used by all stations in a Basic
Service Set as part of the frame header.

Beacon: A wireless LAN frame broadcast by access points that signals their availability.

Evil Twin Attack. An unauthorized AP whose goal is to masquerade as an existing

legitimate/ authorized AP is called an Evil Twin. The evil twin AP is designed and
located so that client stations receive stronger signals from it. Legitimate users are lured
into the evil twin, and unknowingly give away user IDs and passwords.

Independent BSS: An IBSS is usually an ad-hoc network. In an IBSS, all of the stations
are responsible for sending beacons.

IDS: Intrusion detection system.

MITM: Man in the middle. See Section 8.

Service Set Identifier (SSID): All APs and stations within the same wireless network use
an identifier that is up to 32-bytes long.

Social Engineering: Social engineering is a term, coined in jest that refers to all non-
technical methods of collecting information about a person so that the passwords the

23
person may use can be predicted.  The methods of collection range from dumpster diving,
analyzing the publicly available information to making phone calls impersonating others.

STA: A wireless station.

WEP: Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is a shared-secret key encryption system used to
encrypt packets transmitted between a station and an AP.

Cross References
The following is a list of other articles in the handbook related to wireless networks. 
Article numbers are as in the Handbook TOC.

26. Radio Frequency and Wireless Communications Security

27. Propagation Characteristics of Wireless Channels
43. Wireless Local Area Networks
44. Security Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks
46. Mobile IP (Internet Protocol)
48. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) over Wireless Links
50. Wireless Internet
56. PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)
67. Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
68. Wireless Networks Standards and Protocol (802.11)
74. Wireless Information Warfare
142. Hacking Techniques in Wireless Networks (mine)
150. Wireless Threats and Attacks
151. WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) Security
152. Wireless Security
153. Cracking WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)

References
1. John Bellardo and Stefan Savage, “802.11 Denial-of-Service Attacks: Real
Vulnerabilities and Practical Solutions”, 2003, Usenix 2003 Proceedings.
http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/users/savage/papers/UsenixSec03.pdf Retrieved Jan 20,
2004.
2. Jon Edney and William A. Arbaugh, Real 802.11 Security: Wi-Fi Protected
Access and 802.11i, 480 pages, Addison Wesley, 2003, ISBN: 0-321-13620-9

3. Jamil Farshchi, Wireless Intrusion Detection Systems, November 5, 2003,

http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1742 Retrieved Jan 20, 2004

4. Bob Fleck and Jordan Dimov, "Wireless Access Points and ARP Poisoning:
Wireless vulnerabilities that expose the wired network," October 2001.

24
 http://www.cigitallabs.com/resources/papers/download/arppoison.pdf. Retrieved
on Jan 20, 2004.

5. Rob Flickenger, Wireless Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools, 286
pages, O'Reilly & Associates, September 2003, ISBN: 0-596-00559-8

6. Matthew S. Gast, 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, 464 pages,
O’Reilly & Associates, April 2002, ISBN: 0596001835.

7. Vikram Gupta, Srikanth Krishnamurthy, and Michalis Faloutsos, “Denial of

Service Attacks at the MAC Layer in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks”, Proceedings
of 2002 MILCOM Conference, Anaheim, CA, October 2002.

8. Chris Hurley, Michael Puchol, Russ Rogers, and Frank Thornton, WarDriving:
Drive, Detect, Defend, A Guide to Wireless Security, ISBN: 1931836035,
Syngress, 2004.

9. IEEE, IEEE 802.11 standards documents, http://standards.ieee.org/wireless/ .

Retrieved Jan 20, 2004

10. Tom Karygiannis and Les Owens, Wireless Network Security: 802.11, Bluetooth
and Handheld Devices, National Institute of Standards and Technology Special
Publication 800-48, November 2002. http://cs-www.ncsl.nist.gov/publications/
nistpubs/800-48/NIST_SP_800-48.pdf . Retrieved Jan 20, 2004

11. Prabhaker Mateti, TCP/IP Suite, The Internet Encyclopedia, Hossein Bidgoli
(Editor), John Wiley 2003, ISBN 0471222011.

12. Robert Moskowitz, “Debunking the Myth of SSID Hiding”, Retrieved on March
10, 2004. http://www.icsalabs.com/html/communities/WLAN/wp_ssid_hiding.
pdf.

13. Bruce Potter and Bob Fleck, 802.11 Security, O'Reilly & Associates, 2002; ISBN:
0-596-00290-4.

14. William Stallings, Wireless Communications & Networks, Prentice Hall, 2001,
ISBN: 0130408646.

15. War-chalking, http://www.warchalking.org/.  Retrieved Jan 20, 2004.

16. Joshua Wright, “Detecting Wireless LAN MAC Address Spoofing”, Retrieved on
Jan 20, 2004. http://home.jwu.edu/jwright/

25
Further Reading
Stallings’ book is a broad introduction to wireless communications including electrical
signal theory, TCP/IP suite, IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth. Gast’s book is devoted to
802.11. The report by Karygiannis and Les Owens is a gentle introduction to wireless
security. Potter and Fleck's book is about network security in general in spite of its title,
and covers several Unix-like OS. The book by Edney and Arbaugh is an advanced
technical book aimed at wireless networking professionals and covers 802.11i and WPA.

The website 802.11-security.com/ is a rich collection of links. The site at en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/IEEE_802.11 shows promise that it will become a living free encyclopedia on
wireless networks.

The research paper by Bellardo and Savage provides an experimental analysis of denial
of service attacks at the wireless MAC level. This paper also describes a method of
transmitting arbitrary frames even while the wireless card firmware attempts to sanitize
the frame content.

Section 8.3 is based on the white paper by Fleck and Dimov.

The article by Farshchi is a non-technical overview of the capabilities of wireless

intrusion detection systems.

The book by Hurley et al. is all about war driving.

26