The Research And Enhancement Based On WLAN Security Protocol

Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) has become increasingly popular as a new focus of the network technology nowadays. It successfully combines the advantages of both wireless communication and network technology. Compared with Local Area Network (LAN), it's easier to deploy and more convenient to use. However, because of the particularity and defect of its media, WLAN also has the disadvantage of facing various security threats, such as eavesdrop or being tampered by malicious Hacker. As a consequence, security research is becoming one of the important topics of WLAN.Based on the systematic research of the current status and security mechanisms of WLAN while also comparing the characteristics of all the security mechanisms being used, this paper introduces the concept of Security Broker to coordinate user's dual demand of Security and QoS. As an important aspect of Security Broker, we classified WLAN security to three different layers, Expert, Trained and Novice, each layer gathers some security mechanisms to provide Users with different security service at different circumstances. The advantages of Security Broker could be concluded as simplifies users' security setting process while at the same time mediates security and QoS.At present, IEEE802.11 designated WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) as a standard security protocol for WLAN security. WEP is used to encrypt data frame so as to protect confidential, access control and data integrity. In this paper, we also use WEP as a security mechanism for the security layer of Trained. However, WEP contains some defects and thus incurs some attacks against WLAN such as the Reuse of keystream, Decryption dictionary and Message modification. As a possible solution, a properly enhancement of WEP protocol will be presented. Using periodic refreshed keys in dual key sockets, this modification of WEP protocol could effectively resists Reuse of keystream and Decryption dictionary attacks. In the wake of testing the effect of this modification by using statistical method, we also discussed the feasibility of this proposed project.The Security Broker and the enhancement of WEP protocol introduced in this paper aiming at providing different security services to meet different demand can also resists Reuse of keystream and Decryption dictionary attacks. In view of this point, this paper has certain value of providing independent security control and may also makes certain contribution to the research of WLAN security.