Home Wireless Security and Privacy A Practical Protocol Mixing

Abstract—With the rising of wireless technologies, a lot of wireless devices have started to reach the domestic domain. Most of them are intended to simplify common tasks avoiding the use of cables. Home users buy wireless devices because of their simplicity and because they are way more practical. But few people think of their data privacy and security. They feel save behind their home walls without knowing that anyone will be able to listen to their wireless traffic without notice. Is our privacy compromised? Are our home connections secured? How can we ensure nobody is hacking our traffic? This and other several related questions are beginning to concern the home users. In an effort to put everything together, this document is intended to show the wireless technologies that coexist nowadays in the domestic domain, and how they affect the home privacy and security. Thus, the main output of this paper is to explore the lines to follow in a way to build a much secure environment, through the definition of a framework for a protocol mixing system.

Keywords- WLAN, Wireless hacking, Information security I. INTRODUCTION ONG time ago when the first Wi-Fi standards appeared, nobody would preview such a development of this technology. It was 1999, the 802.11a/b standard was approved and the first Wi-Fi products begin to reach the market at speeds up to 11Mbps [1]. However two years later in 2001, a security flaw was discovered in the WEP encryption method used by both standards [2, 3]. The notice was a bad hit for the industry because it came just when the technology was reaching the domestic ambit along with the integration of DSL lines. These facts lead to develop of a new security protocol to overcome the issues caused by the weakness of the WEP. It was called WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) and it was considered a temporary encryption protocol while the 802.11i standard was finally prepared. Meanwhile the first reliable Bluetooth standard 802.15.1 was released in 2002, allowing the creation of the first Bluetooth devices using the 1.1 definition. Later in 2004 the final revision of 802.11i was approved, allowing the creation of the new WPA2. This protocol provided better security than the older WPA because it used

the AES encryption system rather than the more vulnerable RC4 TKIP system. Although the improvement in security terms, the old pre-2004 equipment was incompatible with the new standard and users were forced to upgrade their devices which in most cases was not possible. In the middle of this cross-over technology a new security flaws were discovered inside the Bluetooth standard [9]. The Blue Bug was the most famous of them, and allowed an attacker to access any Bluetooth device without permission. Thousands of products were affected by these issues, compromising once again the home privacy. All the manufacturers were aware that users wouldn’t be willing to change their recently bought equipment, so that gave time to develop a new revision. But the Wi-Fi privacy didn’t last that longer. In the late 2005 a security flaw was discovered in the WPA protocol that enabled an attacker to use a dictionary or brute force attack to retrieve the password used to access the Wi-Fi network [8]. Although it was only practical with short or well known passwords, the impact in home wireless security was enormous. The new equipments implementing WPA2 were still beginning to reach the market, and with the Bluetooth still in danger, and the WPA almost broken, the home privacy was in great compromise. Fortunately in late 2007 the 2.1 Bluetooth standard came to solve the problems of previous definitions. Minor security bugs were still practical to explode but in fact Bluetooth seemed to be secured for the moment. However, Wi-Fi was still vulnerable and in 2008 investigations finally proved the weakness of the WPA-TKIP protocol by using several attacks not based on dictionary or brute force attack [4]. This kind of attacks are currently under improvement or development as on 2009, and all home users are strongly recommended to switch to WPA2-AES protocol [13, 14], which for now, is the most secure protocol implemented in the domestic devices. But AES design requires specific and more powerful hardware which means more expensive equipment, and many home users don’t want to update their old equipment. The content of the present paper is organized as follows. Sections II, III describe the present status of the home wireless security; Sections IV and V focus the problems