LEMAP: A Lightweight EAP based Mutual Authentication Protocol for IEEE 802.11 WLAN

The increasing integration of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) necessitates robust and efficient authentication mechanisms. While existing IoT authentication protocols address certain security concerns, they often fail to provide comprehensive protection against threats such as perfect forward secrecy violations, insider attacks, and key compromise impersonation, or impose significant computational and communication overhead on resource-constrained IoT systems. This paper presents a novel Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) based scheme for IoT-WLAN environments that addresses these security challenges while maintaining cost-effectiveness. Our approach utilizes elliptic curve cryptography and incorporates advanced features including perfect forward secrecy, strong identity protection, and explicit key confirmation. We provide a thorough security analysis using informal heuristics, formal methods (Random Oracle Model and BAN Logic), and automated verification with ProVerif. Performance evaluations demonstrate that our protocol achieves lower communication, storage, and computational costs compared to state-of-the-art solutions, with an average 79.6% reduction in computation time. A detailed comparison with existing schemes highlights the efficiency and enhanced security features of our proposed authentication mechanism for IoT-WLAN deployments.

IEEE 802.11standard for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) is facing more and more problems linked to security threats, which expose legitimate users to increased risk.Therefore, the security is always a major concern for WLAN development and one of the major challenges in WLAN security issue is authentication.Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) has been widely used for that important aspect.EAP is a framework of authentication process that uses several methods to perform that process.In this paper, the flows of the existing EAP methods will be analyzed and illustrated.Then, a new EAP method Extensible Authentication Protocol -Moderate Weight Extensible Authentication Protocol "EAP-MEAP" will be proposed.This method combines between the simplicity of deployment and management of password methods and the robustness of certificated ones.EAP-MEAP can be used widely in IEEE802.11 for WLANs (Wi-Fi and its application domains) as solution to the presented flaws.A security assessment to the proposed protocol will be presented.Finally, the checked and verified results of the EAP-MEAP security properties using the specialized model checker AVISPA, which provides formal proofs of the security protocols.

The security of identity authentication and key negotiate is an important foundation of WLAN (wireless local area network) security. We present a new authentication and key exchange protocol wireless key exchange (WKE) using for WLAN. The BAN logic is used to formalize and prove the security of WKE at the same time. At last we combine the WKE and Diffie-Hellman exchange to accomplish key negotiate in mobile IP for WLAN.

A new key management and security scheme is proposed to integrate Layer Two (L2) and Layer Three (L3) keys for secure and fast Mobile IPv6 handover over IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). Unlike the original IEEE 802.11-based Mobile IPv6 Fast Handover (FMIPv6) that requires time-consuming IEEE 802.1x-based Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) authentication on each L3 handover, the newly proposed key management and security scheme requires only one 802.1x-EAP regardless of how many L3 handovers occur. Therefore, the proposed scheme reduces the handover latency that results from a lengthy 802.1x-based EAP. The proposed key management and security scheme is extensively analyzed in terms of security and performance, and the proposed security scheme is shown to be more secure than those that were previously proposed.

Recent demands on affordable, portable wireless communication and computation devices have resulted in exponential growth of wireless networks ranging from Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) and Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWAN) to Ad-Hoc and Sensor networks. The major goal of wireless communication is to allow users to communicate together and to have access to global network anytime anywhere. This has led to wide acceptance of infrastructure based cellular networks (WWANs) where mobile stations communicate with a centralized controller, often referred as Access Point (AP) that is connected to the wired networks. On the other hand, WLANs have appeared as dominant popular technologies in many venues including a local area such as an academic campus or an airport terminal. These wireless networks mostly rely on IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) technology and its various derived versions (i.e. 802.11a,b,g). IEEE 802.11 standard supports two operational modes: The infrastructure-based Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) and an infrastructure-less Ad-Hoc Networks. A WLAN (Conti, 2003) typically imposes the existence of an AP and normally is connected to the wired networks to provide internet access for mobile devices. Obviously, only one hop link is needed to communicate between mobile devices and AP. In contrast, there is no AP or infrastructure in Ad-Hoc networks. Any two stations can communicate directly when they are in the range of reception of each other. To this end, the stations may use multi-hop routing to deliver their packets to destinations. The ad-hoc protocols (Conti, 2003; Mohapatra & Krishnamurthy, 2005) are self-configured for address and routing in the face of mobility and the network topology may change in each configuration. The multi-hop wireless ad-hoc networks, or multi-hop wireless networks enable wireless networking in the environments where the wired or cellular connections are impossible, inadequate, or cost effective (e.g. battle field, disaster recovery, etc.). The popularity of internet over the last decades has resulted in rapid advancement of demanding applications. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) (Stevens, 1994) is a well-known de facto protocol in developing today’s internet. Basically, TCP provides a connection-oriented and reliable end-to-end data delivery between two hosts in traditional wired networks. Since TCP is well tuned and due to its wide acceptance in internet, it is desirable to extend and adopt its functionality to wireless networks. On the

In this paper, we present Wi-Cache, an SDN (Software Defined Networking) based distributed content caching system in a wireless local area network (WLAN). One way to effectively reduce congestion in the backhaul links of today's IP network is caching videos and non-voice traffic closer to mobile and wireless devices. Cellular base stations and WiFi access points (APs) are the major serving points and the closest network nodes to mobile and wireless devices. WiFi APs are becoming a part of heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs), and are also present abundantly at homes and workplaces. Therefore, one viable solution to reduce the bandwidth consumption of backhaul links is caching contents in these WiFi APs so that user requests can be served locally. Wi-Cache caches contents on low-cost wireless APs, and delivers them to mobile clients when they are requested. It minimizes the need to fetch contents from remote content servers. It also addresses two major WLAN challenges during content delivery-client mobility and load balancing on WiFi APs. Wi-Cache prototype implementation, and the evaluation of its feasibility and performance is based on Odin, an open source SDN framework for enterprise WLANs.

Wireless local area network (WLAN) has changed the paradigm of communication and become ubiquitous. As the number of devices connected to wireless is increasing, it is therefore, essential to find vulnerabilities in the security of wireless networks. In this research WLAN security vulnerabilities are exposed in real time. WLAN security techniques (MAC filtering, Hidden SSID and WPA2) available to residential users were practically exploited. Tenda WiFi wireless access point was set up with MAC filtering, hidden SSID and WPA2 security mechanisms in different combinations in such a way as to add an additional layer of security to previous configuration. Kali Linux version 2017.1 was used as a platform to exploit WLAN networks in real time. In this research, the sensitive information broadcasted by WLAN was utilized to carry out attacks on wireless networks. A practical demonstration of exposing vulnerabilities in MAC filtering, Hidden SSID with MAC filtering and WPA2-PSK with hidden SSID and MAC filtering security mechanisms of AP was carried out in real time. It was observed that the existing security mechanisms were vulnerable. Researchers have exploited many security mechanisms of WLAN focusing upon a single parameter of WLAN security at a time. However, in this work, the three available security mechanisms were cascaded to produce a three layer security mechanism i.e. WPA2 with hidden SSID and MAC filtering. This cascaded model was exploited in real time.

Enterprise wireless local area networks (WLANs) that consist of a high-density of hundreds to thousands of access points (APs) are being deployed rapidly in corporate offices and university campuses. The primary purpose of these deployments is to satisfy user demands for high bandwidth, mobility, and reliability. However, our recent study of two such WLANs showed that these networks are rarely used at their peak capacity, and the majority of their resources are frequently idle. In this paper, we bring to attention that a large fraction of idle WLAN resources results in significant energy losses. Thousands of WLANs world-wide collectively compound this problem, while raising serious concerns about the energy losses that will occur in the future. In response to this compelling problem, we propose the adoption of resource on-demand (RoD) strategies for WLANs. RoD strategies power on or off WLAN APs dynamically, based on the volume and location of user demand. As a specific solution, we propose SEAR, a practical and elegant RoD strategy for high-density WLANs. We implement SEAR on two wireless networks to show that SEAR is easy to integrate in current WLANs, while it ensures no adverse impact on end-user connectivity and performance. In our experiments, SEAR reduces power consumption to 46%. Using our results we discuss several interesting problems that open future directions of research in RoD WLANs.

In recent years, there has been a growing demand in 3G data services, leading to deteriorating 3G service quality. Noting that Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) as well as 3G cellular networks are widely available today, WLANs could be effectively utilized to relieve the overload in the 3G networks. On the other hand, use of IEEE 802.11 WLAN Access Points (APs) has proliferated tremendously, resulting in a communication device inside a mobile vehicle to access the Internet. However, using Internet through APs in moving vehicles is challenging since WLAN APs have a short range and are typically not deployed to cover all roads. Several studies have investigated the performance of using intermittently available WLAN connectivity from moving vehicles for data transfers and predictive offloading in WLAN/3G networks. However, these works have not addressed mobility pattern from the viewpoint that drivers' mobility is generally known to have a daily routine. Therefore, in this paper, we consider the user's historical mobility to decide to offload data to WLAN instead of switching to 3G network. The user's application usage pattern is also considered into predicting available WLANs. To evaluate the performance of our offloading algorithm, we analyze the prediction error and conduct simulations. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves shorter transmission time than the existing schemes that do not consider user's mobility pattern by delivering more data to the WLANs.

There has been widespread deployment of IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (LANs) because of high demand from mobile terminals, such as iPod and Android terminals. With the increasing energy consumption of the wireless LANs, the development of power saving technologies incorporated into the wireless LANs have become important. In wireless LANs, access points (APs) continuously consume the power regardless of the communication. Therefore, we have proposed the Radio-On-Demand (ROD) wireless LAN, which provides power saving schemes on the basis of the utilization of wireless LANs. In this study, we particularly focus on the power saving scheme of the APs, and propose the decentralized association management of ROD wireless LANs. In our scheme, an AP assigns associated stations (STAs) to new APs before switching to sleep mode. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can realize sufficient power saving.

Queueing systems to study the energy consumption of a campus WLAN

Due to the prevalence of insecure open 802.11 access points, it is currently easy for a malicious party to launch a variety of attacks such as eavesdropping and data injection. In this paper, we consider a particular threat called the evil twin attack, which occurs when an adversary clones an open access point and exploits common automatic access point selection techniques to trick a wireless client into associating with the malicious access point. We propose two lines of defense against this attack. First, we present an evil twin detection strategy called context-leashing based upon recording the nearby access points when first associating with an access point. Using this contextual information, the client determines if an adversary has setup an evil twin access point at a different location. Next, we propose an SSH-style authentication method called EAP-SWAT to perform one-way access point authentication that fits into the extensible authentication protocol (EAP) framework.

The idea of smart and sustainable cities is incomplete without using information and communication technologies. Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) plays a vital role in connecting different services, transferring data and providing indoor localization. WLAN fingerprinting technique has become the most common approach for indoor localization in smart cities. This technique utilizes received signal strength (RSS) and channel status from the installed WLAN Access Points (AP). Currently, WLAN planning relies on the site survey, which is laborious and uneconomical for large areas. The WLAN has a limited number of channels assigned in the frequency reuse strategy. An inefficient channel assignment strategy will lead towards increased interference, thus degrading the overall service. This paper proposes a WLAN channel assignment strategy for large and crowded indoor areas. The proposed scheme assigns the channels to installed APs for indoor localization in fingerprinting framework. The proposed technique ensures that the proposed AP channel assignment algorithm in our network-planning scheme mitigates interference.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) has eventually become a common positioning technology. While GPS enabled many applications, satellite signals have yet to overcome many obstacles to enable indoor positioning. Meanwhile, due to the wide deployment of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) in recent years, WLAN positioning algorithms have become popular for mobile device positioning in indoor environments. The most accurate WLAN positioning algorithms exploit the so-called fingerprinting concept which consists of two stages. In the offline stage (training), the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) from a set of available Access Points (AP) is measured for a number of reference locations and stored in a database. Due to the availability of many APs and the complex structure of indoor environments, this information is distinctive for each reference location and thus is called a position fingerprint. In the online stage (testing), a mobile device receives RSSIs from the APs and their fingerprint is compared to the fingerprints that are stored in the database for a best possible match. WLAN fingerprinting can provide high accuracy in indoor environments when there are many APs which ensure fingerprint uniqueness. This paper provides a novel approach to use WLAN multipath signals as possible fingerprints for positioning algorithms for applications with lower number of access points. The paper provides an initial study.

Wireless local area network (WLAN) planning process is a complicated task and requires constant monitoring as the health of WLAN can be easily interfered by many factors. With 802.11n access points and routers deployment, managing the WLAN can be further complicating the usual tasks for wireless administrator. This paper presents a network plan for IEEE 802.11 based WLAN as pre-deployment plan for the WLAN 802.11n standard devices. The strategy to be used is a combination of neural network based clustering and genetic algorithm for collecting real WLAN data and a pure genetic algorithm for simulation. Computational results show that this hybrid approach provides good enough quality solutions within a reasonable amount of time. His document gives formatting instructions for authors preparing papers for publication in the Proceedings of an IEEE conference. The authors must follow the instructions given in the document for the papers to be published. You can use this document as both an instruction set and as a template into which you can type your own text.