802.11 Security

The standard security built into all 802.11 products today has been found to be vulnerable to attack both theoretical and practical in nature. The IEEE Task Group I has been working for the past two years to develop a security standard know as the Robust Security Network (RSN) which will address all known attacks and greatly inprove the security of 802.11 based equipment. The significant features of RSN consist of IEEE 802.1X and two new encryption protocols to replace WEP. This paper describes several of the WEP attacks that have been identified to date and describes the 802.11i draft standard as it exists today. The paper concludes with a discussion on some of the common authentication protocols that will be used in conjunction with 802.11i in the enterprise environment.