Unit 1 Technology Terminology

Jamming

There are a number of ways to jam a wireless network. One method is flooding an AP with deauthentication frames. This effectively overwhelms the network and prevents legitimate transmissions from getting through. This attack is a little unusual because there probably isn't anything in it for the hacker.

802.11a

802.11a is an IEEE standard for transmitting data over a wireless network. It uses a 5 GHz frequency band and supports data transfer rates of 54 Mbps, or 6.75 megabytes per second. The 802.11a standard was released in 1999, around the same time as 802.11b.

802.11ac (Wave 1)

802.11ac (also called 5G Wi-Fi) is the fifth generation of Wi-Fi technology, standardized by the IEEE. It is an evolution of the previous standard, 802.11n, that provides greater bandwidth and more simultaneous spatial streams. This allows 802.11ac devices to support data transfer rates that are several times faster than those of 802.11n devices. The initial draft of the 802.11ac standard was approved in 2012, but 802.11ac hardware was not released until 2013. The initial 802.11ac standard (wave 1) supports a maximum data transfer rate of 1300 Mbps, or 1.3 Gbps, using 3 spatial streams.

802.11ac (Wave 2)

802.11ac (also called 5G Wi-Fi) is the fifth generation of Wi-Fi technology, standardized by the IEEE. It is an evolution of the previous standard, 802.11n, that provides greater bandwidth and more simultaneous spatial streams. This allows 802.11ac devices to support data transfer rates that are several times faster than those of 802.11n devices. The second 802.11ac standard (wave 2) will support twice the bandwidth of wave 1 devices and offer data transfer rates of up to 3470 Mbps.

802.11b

802.11b is a Wi-Fi standard developed by the IEEE for transmitting data over a wireless network. It operates on a 2.4 GHz band and allows for wireless data transfers up to 11 Mbps. A faster standard, called 802.11g, was introduced a few years after 802.11b and supports data transfer rates up to 54 Mbps.

802.11e

802.11e is an amendment to 802.11 standards, which defines a set of quality of service (QoS) for wireless LAN applications through alterations to the media access control layer. It also provides essential services for delay sensitive applications, such as streaming video and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). It corresponds to the Wi-Fi multimedia certification of the Wi-Fi Alliance. 802.11e offers subscribers high speed internet access with VoIP, full motion video and high quality audio. Networks using 802.11e operate at radio frequencies ranging between 2.4 GHz and 2.4835 GHz or between 5.75 GHz and 5.850 GHz. This higher frequency ranges accounts for advantages such as more channels, fast data transfer speeds and less chances of interference.

802.11g

802.11g is a Wi-Fi standard developed by the IEEE for transmitting data over a wireless network. It operates on a 2.4 GHz bandwidth and supports data transfer rates up to 54 Mbps. 802.11g is backward compatible with 802.11b hardware, but if there are any 802.11b-based computers on the network, the entire network will have to run at 11 Mbps (the max speed that 802.11b supports). However, you can configure your 802.11g wireless router to only accept 802.11g devices, which will ensure your network runs at its top speed.

802.11i

802.11i is a standard for wireless local area networks (WLANs) that provides improved encryption for networks that use the popular 802.11a, 802.11b (which includes Wi-Fi) and 802.11g standards. The 802.11i standard requires new encryption key protocols, known as Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The 802.11i standard was officially ratified by the IEEE in June of 2004, and thereby became part of the 802.11 family of wireless network specifications.

802.11n

802.11n is a wireless (Wi-Fi) standard that was introduced in 2007. It supports a longer range and higher wireless transfer rates than the previous standard, 802.11g. 802.11n devices support MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) data transfers, which can transmit multiple streams of data at once. This technology effectively doubles the range of a wireless device. Therefore, a wireless router that uses 802.11n may have twice the radius of coverage as an 802.11g router. This means a single 802.11n router may cover an entire household, whereas an 802.11g router might require additional routers to bridge the signal. The previous 802.11g standard supported transfer rates of up to 54 Mbps. Devices that use 802.11n can transfer data over 100 Mbps. With an optimized configuration, the 802.11n standard can theoretically support transfer rates of up to 500 Mbps.

Rogue Access Point

A wireless access point that has been installed on a secure network without explicit authorization from a local network administrator, whether added by a well-meaning employee or by a malicious attacker.

Spoofed Deassociation and Deauthentication Frames Floods

An extension of the deauthentication or deassociation frames flood attack is sequential multiframe attacks, such as sending deauthentication or deassociation frames followed by a forged probe responses and beacon frames flood providing incorrect information (ESSID, channel) about an access point to associate with.

802.11p

IEEE 802.11p is an approved amendment to the IEEE 802.11 standard to add wireless access in vehicular environments (WAVE), a vehicular communication system. It defines enhancements to 802.11 (the basis of products marketed as Wi-Fi) required to support Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) applications.

802.11r

IEEE 802.11r is an amendment to the 802.11 standard for the deployment of IP-based telephony over 802.11-based phone devices. The IEEE 802.11r amendment is designed to increase handoff speed between access points in a wireless local area network (WLAN). IEEE 802.11r serves as a fast-roaming standard that addresses connectivity and is critical to applications that require high quality and low latency, particularly Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). IEEE 802.11r is also known as the fast basic service set.

802.11w

IEEE 802.11w-2009 is an approved amendment to the IEEE 802.11 standard to increase the security of its management frames.

802.1X

The 802.1X standard is designed to enhance the security of wireless local area networks (WLANs) that follow the IEEE 802.11 standard. 802.1X provides an authentication framework for wireless LANs, allowing a user to be authenticated by a central authority. The actual algorithm that is used to determine whether a user is authentic is left open and multiple algorithms are possible.

Frame Deletion Attack

The idea behind this attack is to corrupt the bypassing frame's CRC-32 so that the receiving host will drop it. At the same time, the attacker sends a spoofed ACK frame to the sender telling it that the frame was successfully received. As a result, the corrupt frame is efficiently deleted without being resent.