A Solution to WLAN Authentication and Association DoS Attacks

-The growing popularity of the 802.11-based Wireless LAN (WLAN) also increases its risk of security attacks. The new WLAN security standard, 802.11i, addresses most issues on user authentication and data encryption; however, it does not protect WLANs against Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. This paper presents a solution to detect and resolve authentication request flooding (AuthRF) and association request flooding (AssRF). We developed an experimental framework to demonstrate and quantify AuthRF and AssRF attacks against TCP and wireless Voice over IP (WVoIP) communications. Our study shows that such attacks can be easily launched, and cause service disruption. We then implement a solution based on traffic pattern analysis and filtering to resolve and prevent AuthRF and AssRF attacks. This solution is validated by empirical data.