Wireless Attacks - CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 - 2.4

It started as a normal day

• Surfing along on your wireless network

- And then you're not

• And then it happens again

- And again

• You may not be able to stop it

- There's (almost) nothing you can do

- Time to get a long patch cable

• Wireless disassociation

- A significant wireless

denial of service (DoS) attack

802.11 management frames

802.11 wireless includes a number of management features

- Frames that make everything work

- You never see them

Important for the operation of 802.11 wireless

- How to find access points, manage QoS, associate/disassociate with an access point, etc.

Original wireless standards did not add protection for management frames

- Sent in the clear, no authentication or validation

Protecting against deauth attacks

• IEEE has already addressed the problem

- 802.11w - July 2014

• Some of the important management frames

are encrypted

- Disassociate, deauthenticate,

channel switch announcements, etc.

• Not everything is encrypted

- Beacons, probes, authentication, association

• 802.11w is required for 802.11ac compliance

- This will roll out going forward

Radio frequency (RF) jamming

Denial of Service

- Prevent wireless communication

Transmit interfering wireless signals

- Decrease the signal-to-noise ratio at the receiving device

- The receiving device can't hear the good signal

Sometimes its not intentional

- Inteference, not jamming

- Microwave oven, fluorescent lights

Jamming is not intentional

- Someone wants your network to not work

Wireless Jamming

• Many different types

- Constant, random bits / Constant, legitimate frames

• Data sent at random times

- Random data and legitimate frames

• Reactive jamming

- Only when someone else tries to communicate

• Needs to be somewhere close

- Difficult to be effective from a distance

• Time to go fox hunting

- You'll need the right equipment to hunt down the jam

- Directional antenna, attenuator