Security issues of the IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN

The IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN standard was established in 1989 and was originally intended to seek a wireless equivalent to Ethernet. In this way, it has developed successions of robust enterprise grade solutions that in many cases meet or even exceed the demands of the enterprise network. IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN networks are designed to provide wireless connectivity in a range of roughly 300 feet from the base. The lead application being shared over the wireless LAN is data. Provisions are being made to accommodate audio, video, and other forms of streaming multimedia. Wireless security is a major demand in the secure data transferring services. Security challenges such as identity theft, international credit card fraud, communications fraud and corporate fraud are some of the main barriers preventing wireless technologies from growing and over taking the wired technology position. The 802.11b wireless LAN includes a protocol called wired equivalent privacy (WEP) which is meant to protect the wireless network. We have been able to find some major flaws in this protocol which lead the whole system to be insecure and thus unreliable. For example, the cryptographic technique used in the WEP protocol, which is a fundamental tool to achieve the above goals, is rather primitive and can be broken fairly simply. The purpose of this paper is to explore the security vulnerabilities of the 802.11b wireless LAN and to present solutions for some of its major vulnerabilities.