Wep Protocol Security Analysis And Research

WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) is a new computer network with wireless communication technology. Wireless multiple-access channel is applied as WLAN communication media. WLAN has the overall advantage of flexible, convenient and economic, and it is extensive used in various fields such as campus, hospital, official, airport, and hotel and so on. In practice, WLAN's communication media is open, there are many security threats. As a result, how to construct a secure WLAN is always a hot research topic.With the advantage of efficient encryption rate and lower hardware requirement, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) is widely taken as protecting WLAN's security. In the misuse of RC4 stream cipher and in defect of key management, some of their disadvantages are discovered in practice. How to enhance the security of WEP is necessary.This thesis presents a dynamic key management algorithm based on the analysis of WEP design flaws. And in the WEP cracking experiment, it tests its key management bugs and validates the improved algorithm. Firstly, this thesis analysises the secure threats of WLAN in practice, in view of the characters of WLAN and network security demanded, analysis all existed WLAN security solutions. Secondly, it investigates the WEP operation principles, design goals, security risks and how to improvement, so this thesis presents a new algorithm focus on key management. Finally, we make an experiment with Aircrak; it displays the flaws of WEP and proves the effectiveness of the new algorithm.