A Review Paper on Security of Wireless Network

Abstract

In the past few years, wireless networks, specifically those based on the IEEE 802.11 Standard, have experienced tremendous growth. A team at Rice University recovered the 802.11 Wired Equivalent Privacy 128-bit security key which is used by an active network. This Standard has increased the interest and attention of many researchers in recent years. The IEEE 802.11 is a family of standards, which defines and specifies the parts of the standard. This paper explains the survey on the latest development in how to secure an 802.11 wireless network by understanding its security protocols and mechanism. In order to fix security loopholes a public key authentication and key-establishment procedure has been proposed which fixes security loopholes in current standard. The public key cryptosystem is used to establish a session key securely between the client and Access point. Knowing how these mechanism and protocols works, including its weakness and vulnerabilities can be very helpful for planning, designing, implementing and/or hardening a much secure wireless network, effectively minimizing the impact of an attack. The methods used in current research are especially emphasized to analysis the technique of securing 802.11 standards. Finally, in this paper we pointed out some possible future directions of research.