Vulnerability analysis in wireless local area networks: a survey of some wireless access points in Ghana.
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Date
November, 2016
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Abstract
Wireless Communications can be found everywhere including banks, telecommunication companies, hotels, hospitals, academic institutions, government sectors, intelligence organizations, and the military. If these wireless communications are hacked, huge classified data and information will be lost to un-authorized persons globally.
This thesis work focused on Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). It examined whether there are vulnerabilities in the IEEE 802.11 security protocols of WLANs. If there are vulnerabilities, it further examined whether the vulnerabilities can be used to hack into a WLAN.
The IEEE 802.11 standard specified three types of security protocols for WLANs: Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), and Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA-2). Hence, this thesis work focused on discovery vulnerabilities in WEP, WPA, and WPA-2 through experiments.
A laboratory consisting of two laptops with wireless cards, a wireless access point, and an authentication server was set up to probe into the security protocols. A software called BackTrack 5 was installed on one of the laptops. The software was used to launch various attacks in an attempt to discover vulnerabilities and to retrieve the secret keys of WEP, WPA, and WPA-2 networks.
The expectation of this thesis work is to discover a number of vulnerabilities as possible in the IEEE 802.11 Security Protocols of WLANs. Secondly, it is expected to use these vulnerabilities to successfully hack into WLANs.
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A thesis submitted to the Institute of Distance Learning,Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology In
partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Masters in Information Technology,