Research On Wireless Local Area Network Security

Meeting the nature of the human beings' chase of unconstraint, Wireless local area networks, after its appearance, has been experiencing a booming development. For its advantages of high bandwidth and low cost, the technology of using it as a wireless method access to Internet appears very attractive. However, the security flaws detected in wireless local area network specification of 1999 have blocked its application in scenarios where sensitive information is involved. The early security standard for wireless local area network, wireless equivalent protocol, was totally compromised by the academic and engineering researchers together. After about two years, a new security framework of wireless local area network emerged with a essentially novel security architecture that changed the system construction of wireless local area network. This thesis presents a comprehensive analysis on the wireless local area network security standard draft version 3.0, and furthers the build blocks of the draft from the view of the system architecture. This thesis also shows how to integrate the build blocks into a secure system to meet different application requirements. Furthermore, the security assumptions of the updated draft are determined, and hence the security requirements how to harmonize wireless local area network with other peripheral security systems to achieve enhanced security are fixed on.Beyond the development of wireless local area network itself, another trend, i.e., integration of wide range wireless network and wireless local area network, is flourishing with the goal to construct a global wireless access network. In this way, the two types of wireless network can mutually benefit each other and satisfy both the customers and the operators. The basic framework of integration and state-of-the-art development of standardization in this field is discussed. The trust relationship of entities and security issues involved in the integration operation are also detailed. Finally, the authentication framework of integration of code division multiple access 2000 and wireless local area network is furthered. Some security vulnerabilities of the framework are identified and a novel solution is proposed to enhance the security.