Chapter 17 Information Security

TKIP

(Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) is an encryption protocol included as part of the IEEE 802.11i standard for wireless LANs (WLANs). It was designed to provide more secure encryption than the notoriously weak Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), the original WLAN security protocol.

Closed-system SSID

A "closed network" can refer to a private telephone network that has no external (public switched telephone network) connectivity. ... A "closed network" can refer to a WLAN that does not send its name (SSID) in beacon frames; stations must know the SSID in order to connect to access points in that network.

Bluetooth

A part of the 802.15 specification for WPANs developed and supported by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, founded by Ericsson, Nokia, IBM, Intel, and Toshiba. Bluetooth radios are low-power FHSS transceivers operating in the middle ISM band.

Rogue AP

A rogue access point, also called rogue AP, is any Wi-Fi access point that is installed on a network but is not authorized for operation on that network, and is not under the management of the network administrator.

Wireless IPS

A wireless intrusion prevention system (WIPS) is a dedicated security device or integrated software application that monitors a wireless LAN network's radio spectrum for rogue access points and other wireless threats.

Gain

An increase in RF signal amplitude, estimated in decibels.

CSMA/CA

Carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) in computer networking, is a network multiple access method in which carrier sensing is used, but nodes attempt to avoid collisions by transmitting only when the channel is sensed to be "idle".

dBi, dBd, dBm

Decibels are a relative measurement unit unlike the absolute measurement of milliwatts. dBM:- • 1 mW = 0 dBm. • The m in dBm refers simply to the fact that the reference is 1 milliwatt (1 mW) and therefore a dBm measurement is a measurement of absolute power.

DSSS

Direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) is a transmission technology used in local area wireless network transmissions. In this technology, a data signal at the sending station is combined with a high data rate bit sequence, which divides user data based on a spreading ratio.

RF

Radio frequency (RF) is any of the electromagnetic wave frequencies that lie in the range extending from around3 kHz to300 GHz, which include those frequencies used in radio communication or radar. RF usually refers to electrical rather than mechanical oscillations.

Sectorized, patch, and panel antennas

Sector antennas are another type of semi-directional antenna. Sector antennas provide a pie-shaped (sector) radiation pattern and are usually installed in what is known as a sectorized array. A patch antenna (also known as a rectangular microstrip antenna) is a type of radio antenna with a low profile, which can be mounted on a flat surface. It consists of a flat rectangular sheet or "patch" of metal, mounted over a larger sheet of metal called a ground plane. A panel antenna, in its simplest form, consists of a dipole placed ahead of a flat-panel reflector.

CSMA/CD

Short for Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection, CSMA/CD is a Media Access Control (MAC) protocol. It defines how network devices respond when two devices attempt to use a data channel simultaneously and encounter a data collision.

SSID

a case sensitive, 32 alphanumeric character unique identifier attached to the header of packets sent over a wireless local-area network (WLAN). The SSID acts as a password when a mobile device tries to connect to the basic service set (BSS) -- a component of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN architecture.

Wi-Fi

a facility allowing computers, smartphones, or other devices to connect to the Internet or communicate with one another wirelessly within a particular area.

Yagi

a highly directional and selective shortwave antenna consisting of a horizontal conductor of one or two dipoles connected with the receiver or transmitter and of a set of nearly equal insulated dipoles parallel to and on a level with the horizontal conductor.

802.11

a set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specifications for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer communication in the 900 MHz and 2.4, 3.6, 5, and 60 GHz frequency bands.

AES

a symmetric block cipher chosen by the U.S. government to protect classified information and is implemented in software and hardware throughout the world to encrypt sensitive data.

802.15

a working group of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) IEEE 802 standards committee which specifies wireless personal area network (WPAN) standards. There are 10 major areas of development, not all of which are active.

MAC filtering

allows you to define a list of devices and only allow those devices on your Wi-Fi network. That's the theory, anyway. In practice, this protection is tedious to set up and easy to breach. This is one of the Wi-Fi router features that will give you a false sense of security.

802.1x

defines the encapsulation of the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) over IEEE 802, which is known as "EAP over LAN" or EAPOL.