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Your 802.11 Wireless Network has No Clothes

Your 802.11 Wireless Network has No Clothes

Contact:[email protected]



http://www.cs.umd.edu/~waa/wireless.pdf

Abstract

The explosive growth in wireless networks over the last few years
resembles the rapid growth of the Internet within the last decade. Dur-
ing the beginning of the commercialization of the Internet, organiza-
tions and individuals connected without concern for the security of
their system or network. Over time, it became apparent that some
form of security was required to prevent outsiders from exploiting the
connected resources. To protect the internal resources, organizations
usually purchased and installed an Internet firewall.

We believe that the current wireless access points present a larger
security problem than the early Internet connections. A large number
of organizations, based on vendor literature, believe that the security
provided by their deployed wireless access points is sufficient to
pre-vent
unauthorized access and use. Unfortunately, nothing could be
further from the truth. While the current access points provide sev-
eral security mechanisms, our work combined with the work of others
show that ALL of these mechanisms are completely in-effective. As a
result, organizations with deployed wireless networks are vulnerable to
unauthorized use of, and access to, their internal infrastructure.

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