Research And Improvement Of Security Techniques On Wireless Local Area Network

With the rapid growth of WLAN, many stricter requirements on the security of WLAN have been brought up. Presently, the main approach used to provide data security in WLANs based on 802.11 standards is WEP security mechanism. While fatal security problems exist in the original WEP, and these problems become more and more serious and make WEP unable to keep up with the current security requirements. For this point, many improved security protocols, such as TKIP, 802.1X, 802.11 i, WPA and WAPI.In this dissertation, the basic security mechanisms of WLANs and principles of the present security standards for WLANs are analyzed, and the merits and demerits of them are pointed out along with some attacking methods via the design flaws in the protocols of WLANs and some suggestions against these attacking methods. The fundamental principles in the design of a WLAN security protocols are summed up from the experience and lessons of the protocols in existence, and a new systemic structure is presented to provide security in WLAN, which is based on the fundamental topological structure of Infrastructure. The design includes three main modules, i.e. encryption and data integrality, key management, and identification authentication. The whole performance of the design and its merits and demerits are also analyzed. Finally some WLAN security schemes adopted in products are introduced.