Security Analysis And Improvement Of Ieee Std 802.11 4-way Handshake Protocol

As the widely use of network, Wireless LAN which is easy to access and expand plays a more important role than before. Beacause of the media which is different from the wired LAN, security is a serious concern for the the Wireless LAN.IEEE Std 802.11 is to define one medium access control (MAC) and several physical layer (PHY) specifications. According to the security method, the standard devides the Wireless LAN into two kinds of associations: RSNA and Pre-RSNA. Due to the higher security performance, RSNA becomes the more widely used Wireless LAN. But the vulnerability of the security mechanism in 4-Way Handshake Protocol definded in the standard has been disclosed. It is possible to block 4-Way Handshake protocol which is an essential component of the RSNA establishment procedure by Single Forged Message 1 DoS Attack and Flood Forged Message 1s DoS Attack.In this paper,we make the DoS attacking model on the base of the model of 4-Way Handshake protocol with Colored Petri Nets technology and analysis the existing repairs of the protocol. After explaining the inherent cause of the attack, we propose an effective improvement - Message 1 KRC Authentication which could defend the protocol from the DoS attack. Then, we model and simulation the procedure of the improved 4-Way Handshake defending the Single Forged Message 1 DoS Attack successfully. In the end, we compare the approach we proposed with the existing solutions. It proves that the Message 1 KRC Authentication improves the 4-Way Handshake security characteristic more effectively and efficiently.