Wireless LAN Security: The IEEE 802.11 Risks and Technical Challenges

Amit Mishra, Dangana Muhammad, Joseph Elijah, Dinesh Kumar

Wireless local area networks (LANs) are playing a major role in the information technology revolution. They have found their way into a wide variety of markets including financial sectors, corporations, health care, and education.The rapid deployment of wireless LANs is testimony to the inherent benefits of this technology. Unfortunately, most wireless deployments are, at this time, fundamentally insecure. This is not an exaggeration. It is an accurate assessment of the reality of the current state of the security of wireless 802.11-based environments.Because of its transmission characteristic, many security problems have set in. This paper aims to introduce the security mechanism of the wireless LAN and points out the shortcoming of it.