Security Analysis of WPA2

Abstract

Wireless networks provide convenient and low cost mechanism for connecting network devices. They are ideal since they do not require physical connections .They therefore helps overcome the port limitations of the physical hardware. Any device that has radio receiver can detect these wireless signals as the wireless router transmits the signals uniformly in all directions.  The ease with which connections can be established exposes wireless networks to many attacks. The authentication protocols have been developed to deter any illicit access to wireless networks, Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2 being one of them. The objective of this research paper was to demonstrate that one can still break the Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA) triad in the presence of this authentication protocol. The set up was implemented in Ubuntu 12.04 operating system using Ettercap, File2air, Khexedit , Wireshark and Airodump-ng from Aircrack-ng suite. The results indicated that WPA2 does not actually protect data in transit in wireless networks, and therefore there is need to explore other technologies that can secure wireless networks.

Keywords:WPA2, CIA Triad, Wireless, Security.