A WEP post-processing algorithm for a Robust 802.11 WLAN implementation

    Authors

    T. Kocak;M. Jagetia

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Comput. Commun.

    Keywords

    wireless; LAN; 802.11; security; WEP; Computer Science, Information Systems; Engineering, Electrical &; Electronic; Telecommunications

    Abstract

    Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol used within the IEEE 802.11 standard has "major security flaws" thus wireless local area networks (WLANs) using the protocol are vulnerable to attacks. In this paper, we propose a scrambling algorithm that reduces the security vulnerabilities of the WEP. The algorithm randomizes the data and prevents access from unauthorized users by adding some standard randomness to it. This random characteristic is a function of the private attribute shared between transmitter and receiver only. In this approach the randomness is achieved by RC4 algorithm, and the distribution of the randomness is provided with different algorithms to increase the complexity of rectifying the encrypted data and optimize utilization of the randomness. The algorithm is developed with a consideration for the least computational requirements to achieve both power and cost efficiency. The proposed software solution takes the WEP output as input and the original WEP implementation is not touched, thus it is an easy patch for the deployed systems. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Computer Communications

    Volume

    31

    Issue/Number

    14

    Publication Date

    1-1-2008

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    3405

    Last Page

    3409

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000259618400038

    ISSN

    0140-3664

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