Wireless networks are continuing to grow around the world due to the advantages it offers and all the different services that it provides. In networking environments where the communication goes through a wireless connection, the importance of protecting the private information is a very significant task for network administrators. Beside the great benefits from having this type of network, the major issue of wireless communications is the weak security it provides. Companies and business organizations are more and more involved with the use of wireless networks because of the flexibility, mobility and the scalability it offers, but they are also concerned about the consequences of having a weaker security to protect their expensive investments and information. This thesis discusses the issues behind the security of wireless networks. It explains the background of the wireless networks and describes how the different security algorithms and encryptions work. The authors of this thesis decided to present some of the possible attacks that could occur in wireless networks and also give some security solutions to help others protect their network. The group that worked together on this project had the idea of investigating how secure the actual wireless algorithms and encryptions are. The approach of finding the necessary information for presenting the results and conclusions was to perform penetration tests on wireless networks that were implemented with the three famous security algorithms of WEP, WPA and WPA2. The penetrations tests were performed in lab environments and in home networks with the use of cracking tools. The group used the open source Linux based distribution called BackTrack 5. This operating system provided the group the different cracking tools that would help them perform their investigation. The purpose of performing the penetration tests was to find out the vulnerabilities that each of the security algorithms poses and therefore be able to determine which of them offers the best protection to a wireless network. After the penetration tests were done, the group came up with some solutions by configuring a wireless network with the strongest security options. The solutions were aimed to help others how to configure a specific wireless network in a simple but effective way. The results indicated that the weakest security algorithm would present some major issues for a wireless network. It included a greater possibility of experiencing different network attacks by configuring a wireless network with a weak security algorithm. Overall, this thesis provided the group the necessary information that was beneficial for them to understand how strong a wireless network actually is, and how a penetration test was performed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-21570 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Gjercek, Albin, Andersson, Alexander |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för Informationsvetenskap, Data– och Elektroteknik (IDE), Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för Informationsvetenskap, Data– och Elektroteknik (IDE) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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