Detection of Man-In-The-Middle Attack in IEEE 802.11 Networks
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Date
2011-07-21
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Abstract
The recent proliferation of high speed wireless portable devices has resulted in a significant
demand for wireless LANs. WLANs offer tremendous flexibility to the mobile user, compared
with their wired LANs equivalent. With this development, Wireless networks are vulnerable to
many identity-based attacks in which a malicious device uses forged MAC addresses to
masquerade as a specific client. One of these attacks is Man-in-the-middle attack.
Interestingly the man-in-the-middle is usually part of the network where malicious activities are
mostly least expected. Most stakeholders turn to secure their networks against unauthorized users
paying less attention to those within their own networks.
In solving this malicious activity, we studied the state of the act of executing man-in-the-middle
attack in wireless networks. Based on this study, a mechanism has been developed to detect this
attack. We generated a list of database consisting of IP addresses and MAC addresses of
authorized users on a WLAN to check on packets coming to the destination host. The detection
mechanism has been simulated in a wireless environment to test the effectiveness of the
detection mechanism. In all cases the simulated man-in-the-middle attack was detected.
The performance of the proposed detection mechanism was evaluated against an existing detection
mechanism.
Description
A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE IN TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERING.