ECE122 - Exercise 3

Wireless (WiFi) Security

Dr. M. Ramakrishnan

Associate Professor/ECE

SRM University, AP
Wireless LAN Topology

• Intrastructure Mode Access Point

• Peer to peer mode (Adhoc mode)

Wireless Wireless Wireless

Wireless Wireless End Device End Device End Device
End Device End Device

Adhoc Mode Infrastructure Mode

Security in Infrastructure Mode

• WEP – Wired Equivalent Privacy

• Developed for Wi-Fi Security.
• Approved on September 1999
• Abandoned by Wi-Fi alliance by 2004

• WPA – Wi-Fi Protected Access

• Adopted one year before abandoning WEP
• WPA Personal
• Uses Pre-shared key (PSK)
• WPA Enterprise
• Authentication servers for key and certificate generation
• Vulnerable to intrusion

• WPA2 – Wi-Fi Protected Access Version 2

• Uses AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) Encryption method
Wireless Security -Ranking

1.WPA2 + AES
2.WPA + AES
3.WPA + TKIP/AES (TKIP is there as a fallback method)
4.WPA + TKIP
5.WEP
6.Open Network (no security at all)