Protecting wi-fi beacons from outsider forgeries

Mathy Vanhoef, Prasant Adhikari, Christina Pöpper

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

All Wi-Fi networks periodically broadcast beacons to announce their presence to nearby clients. These beacons contain various properties of the network, including dynamic information to manage the behavior of clients. We first show that an adversary can forge beacons to carry out various known as well as novel attacks. Motivated by these attacks, we propose a scheme to authenticate beacon frames that is efficient and has low bandwidth overhead. We evaluate the security properties of this scheme, and discuss its current implementation in Linux. By collaborating with industry partners, our scheme also got incorporated into the draft 802.11 standard, increasing the chance of it being implemented by vendors.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationWiSec 2020 - Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages155-160
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781450380065
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 8 2020
Event13th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, WiSec 2020 - Linz, Virtual, Austria
Duration: Jul 8 2020Jul 10 2020

Publication series

NameWiSec 2020 - Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks

Conference

Conference13th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, WiSec 2020
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityLinz, Virtual
Period7/8/207/10/20

Keywords

  • 802.11
  • beacon
  • denial-of-service
  • pre-authentication
  • spoofing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Protecting wi-fi beacons from outsider forgeries'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this