Wireless Network Attacks & Defenses Flashcards
3 Wireless Technologies (mcq)
i. Infrared communication
* Line-of-sight
ii. Terrestrial microwave
* Line-of-sight
iii. Radio waves
* High-frequency and low-frequency radio technology
Types of Wireless Networks
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4 Wireless Network Vulnerabilities
- Shared media
* Packets are sent in shared media, accessible to all
* Packets can be sniffed, hijacked, inserted - Signal Blockage
* Electromagnetic waves can be blocked by metals, water
* Bandwidth can be interfered and jammed - No definite borders
* Packets can be sniffed, hijacked, inserted from anywhere that
signals can be detected - No fixed points
* Hard to pin point attacker’s location
3 Types of Wireless Network Attacks
- Reconnaissance Attacks
* Packet sniffers, Ping sweeps, Port scans - Access Attacks
* Password attack, Trust exploitation, Man-in-the-middle attack - Denial of Service Attacks
* Single-Message DoS attacks, Flooding DoS attacks, Distributed
DoS attacks
* Signal jamming
WPAN - Bluetooth | What is Bluetooth
- is a Radio Frequency (RF) specification
- for short-range, point-to-point and point-to-multipoint
- for voice and data transfer
WPAN - Bluetooth | What is it perfect for
- Small
- low power
- low cost
- good performance
WPAN - Bluetooth | What is it useful for
- Cable replacement
- Data and voice access points
- Ad hoc networks
4 Bluetooth Attacks
- Bluejacking
* An attacker sends unsolicited messages to Bluetooth enabled devices, more annoying than harmful - Bluesnarfing
* Attack that access unauthorised information from a wireless
device through Bluetooth connection and steals data stored in
the device - Bluebugging
* Attacker connects to target device without knowledge of owner
and executes commands on the device - Blueborne
* Attack conducted by exploiting a stack buffer overflow flaw,
hijacking Bluetooth connections and gaining control of target
device’s embedded content and functions
WLAN – 802.11 | What is it
- The IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard defines how Radio Frequencies in the unlicensed ISM frequency bands is used for the physical layer and the MAC sublayer of wireless links
- Various implementation of the IEEE 802.11 standard have been developed over the years
TESTED - REF IMAGE
5 WLAN Attacks (First 3)
- WAR Driving / WAR Walking
* Access Point / wireless network discovery
* Wireless location mapping - Wireless Protocol Analyser
* Captured wireless traffic are captured to decode and analyse contents of packets
* Wireless network interface card adapters can operate in one of six modes: master (AP), managed (Client), repeater, mesh, ad-hoc, or monitor (Also called Radio Frequency Monitor RFMON) - RF Interference attacks
* Use equipment to flood RF spectrum with enough interference to impact network
5 WLAN Attacks (Last 2)
- Evil Twin
* An AP setup to mimic an authorised AP so that user’s device connect to evil twin instead - Rogue Access Points
* A rogue access point is an unauthorised wireless access point that has been installed on a secure network without explicit authorization from a local network administrator, allowing attackers to bypass network firewall security
* Use monitoring tools to locate rogue access points
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)
- relies on a secret key that is shared between a wireless client device and the access point (AP)
- A WEP key is an alphanumeric character string that is used for encrypting and decrypting any packet transmitted
- provides confidentiality to wireless transmission
WEP Encryption (btr go watch video)
- Integrity Check Value (ICV) is a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) value
calculated for plaintext - Initialization Vector (IV) is a 24-bit randomly generated value each time a packet is encrypted
- IV and the shared Secret Key are combined to ‘seed’ a random keystream that is combined through exclusive OR (XOR) with the plaintext to form the Cipher text for the packet
- IV is added to the front of the Cypher Text (“Prepended”) for receiver to decrypt message
3 WEP Weakness (btr go watch video)
- Encryption key length is too short (64-bit or 128-bit)
- Initialization Vector (IV) is too short (24-bit)
- WEP implementation produces a detectable pattern that
attackers can break
How does WEP Weakness happen
- 24 bit IV creates only about 16 thousand possible values (2^24)
- Reuse of same IV (called a collision) allows attacker to launch keystream
or IV attack as the same IV and secret key will always create the same keystream - Keystream attack is the method of determining the keystream by
analyzing 2 packets created from the same IV
What is used to Crack WEP Secret Key
AirSnort/Aircrack-ng
How does Cracking WEP Secret Key operate
- It operates by passively monitoring transmissions and computing the encryption key when enough packets have been gathered
- It requires approx. 5-10 million encrypted packets to be
gathered, in which it can guess the encryption password in under a second
WLAN Security Solutions - WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access)
- Replace WEP encryption key with Temporal Key Integrity Protocol
(TKIP) which creates per-packet keys to prevent collision - Unlike WEP, preshared keys (PSK) are not used for encryption but
used as the starting point for generating encryption keys - Replaces CRC with Message Integrity Check (MIC) which provides
integrity check and optional client authentication
WLAN Security Solutions - WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2)
- Uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) instead of RC4
cipher - Available key length of 128, 192 and 256 bits
no
What is WWAN - WiMAX
WWAN - WiMAX
* WiMAX tower
- Similar in concept to a cell-phone tower
- Provides coverage to very large area - 8,000 km2
- A WiMAX receiver
- Receiver and antenna could be an external device or can be built
into a laptop like what WiFi access
no
Properties of WWAN - WiMAX
- Range
- 50 km radius from base station
- Speed
- 70 megabits per second
- Line-of-sight not needed between user and base station
- WiMAX operates similar to WiFi but at higher speeds, over greater
distances and for a greater number of users
no
4 WiMAX Security Issues
- A flaw in the authentication mechanism used by WiMAX’s privacy
and key management (PKM) protocol makes WiMAX networks
susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks - Management frames are not encrypted, allowing an attacker to
collect information about subscribers and other potentially
sensitive network characteristics - Attacker can use legacy management frames to forcibly disconnect legitimate stations
- Physical layer denial of service attacks