Impacts and solutions of control packets vulnerabilities with IEEE 802.11 MAC

In this paper, we focus on the medium access control (MAC), particularly the IEEE 802.11 and we deal with some hidden vulnerabilities based on the control packets CTS (clear to send) and ACK (acknowledgment). Through these vulnerabilities, we show two new smart attacks which were not dealt by the solutions proposed recently like the attack based on the RTS (request to send) packet vulnerability. The malicious node can exploit these vulnerabilities on the MAC protocol, in order to corrupt the monitoring and routing processes. Furthermore, we demonstrate the attacks through algorithms and we show how vulnerabilities can be exploited and how these attacks can be implemented by the attacker. The impact of these attacks is presented through simulation and implementation. Simulation and exprimental results show the impact of the attacks on the network. In addition, the experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of these real attacks and their exploitation. These experimentations allow us to confirm the simulation's results. Furthermore, in order to prevent these attacks, the solutions based on control packet authentication are presented. We propose two kinds of the solution one is cryptography independent and the other one is cryptography dependent. The evaluation and analysis of these solutions are investigated by analytic and simulations analysis. The simulations' results of the proposed solution show that the attacks are prevented and the negative impacts are significantly reduced. In addition, the security cost of the proposed solutions are investigated. Hence, the security costs are insignificant in comparison with the negative impact of these attacks. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.