Wireless networks & Security

 

Introduction

Assignment Tasks

You are to perform a study on various 802.11 wireless networks in order to choose a suitable security measures that should be put in place for a given scenario.

This assignment is divided in two parts. The study will be partially theoretical and technical. The technical part will require you to evaluate the effectiveness of using various standards against known attacks. You will then in part B identify what are the security measures that the company in the chosen scenario should consider implementing.

 

Part A: Technical flaws research

You will need to research several known security flows on the various 802.11 security protocols. You should also consider the various possible types of deployment such as in infrastructure deployment of 802.11 or in enterprise mode.

 

·         Research how to bypass WLAN authentication if SSID is hidden and if administrators use MAC filtering.

·         Research WLAN encryption flaws (WEP, WPA2).

·         Research 802.11 clients and identify flaws and they can be exploited.

 

 

Part B: Research Based Work

Based on your findings in part A, you are required to analyse results obtained and choose suitable security measures for your chosen scenario. Following this, you are expected to defend your security choices by comparing your justifications with different research papers discussing the effectiveness of wireless security protocols in different environments.

 

Effectiveness of the chosen security measures should be evaluated in term of how they can be exploited (if possible), how suitable they are for the environment they will be used in and the threats that the scenario is subject to.

 

You will need to choose one scenario from the list below:

 

·         A small company that only allows staff to access the network.

·         A coffee shop that allows its customers to access the wireless network.

·         A large company that has various levels of access controls in their company.

·         Guests only network where people can use the network for a specific time.

·         A home family wireless network.

 

Learning Outcomes

The following Learning outcomes will be addressed in this assignment:

•    LO2. Be able to describe, explain critically and assess wireless and mobile data communication technologies deployed along with associated security issues.

 

 

•    LO3. Critically analyse 802.11 protocol information and demonstrate skills in designing secure wireless networks

 

 

•    LO4. Apply suitable security measures to protect wireless networks against known weaknesses

 

 

Marking Schemes

It is advantageous if your report is structured in a manner that reflects the allocation of marks below:

Instruction

Your work must be presented in the form of a short technical paper and be no longer than 7 sides plus a facing page that includes the abstract. This should be formatted for A4 page size and use a font size no smaller than 10. Any work beyond the page limit will be ignored from a marking perspective. For completeness, you may if you wish include additional material in an appendix, e.g. screenshots of all your experiments, but this will not contribute to the marks and you should not explicitly refer to any appendix to illustrate results etc. You could use an appendix to show all screenshots of all labs.