Analysis And Research On Security Mechanism Of WLAN

WLAN have the merits of both flexible mobility and high speed and it has become one of the most promising technologies in the field of telecommunication. However, with the wider and wider application of WLAN, the research of its security has become a hot topic.The WLAN based on IEEE802.11 standard series is used most widely. But some vital flaws have been found in its security mechanism. To solve them, IEEE presented some enhanced security mechanisms in 802.11i and China also presented WAPI standard, which is our own secure protocol on WLAN. Currently, there is a trend of integrating WLAN with 3G data networks and how to ensure its security is also very important.In this paper, we will mainly discuss the correlative security mechanisms used in WLAN. The main work we do here is as follows:1. Analyze the security features and requirements of WLAN and its development is also briefly introduced.2. After analyzing the traditional mechanism of the WLAN, we point out its merits and flaws, and some attacking ways also be presented. Then we will give some suggestions to enhance the security of WLAN currently used.3. Analyze the data confidentiality and authentication mechanism used in 802.11i, The analysis emphasized on TKIP and access control based on 802.1x protocol. And also, we present a design scheme of authentication system based on RADIUS protocol and EAP-TLS protocol. At last, we give some analyses on WAPI, which is a national standard for WLAN.4. After analyzing the security mechanism used in 3G systems, we put emphases on the discussion of security problems in 3G-WLAN interworking.