Wireless DoS Attacks: Deauthentication-Disassociation Flood Attack
There are several benefits and limitations of the 802.11 wireless standard. Benefits include mobility, ease of deployment, and flexibility, but the drawbacks include limited bandwidth when compared to wired connections and security features, since anyone within transmission range can collect communications (University of Maryland University College, 2012, pp. 5-6). As noted in Module 9, there are a variety of ways that WEP and WPA/WPA2 authentication can be circumvented. Notably, WEP is prone to FMS Attacks (including Korek and PTW variations) and ChopChop Attacks (University of Maryland University College, 2012, pp. 29-40). WPA and WPA2 are vulnerable to brute-force dictionary attacks (pp. 41-46). And Bluetooth is susceptible to a variety of attacks, including: bluesnarfing, bluejacking, bluebugging, car whisperer and fuzzing (pp. 47-48). According to Symantec’s Jonathan Hassell, in his 2010 article “Wireless Attacks and Penetration Testing”, there are three types of wireless network attacks: Denial of Service (DoS), man in the middle, and ARP Poisoning. Missing from his list is key-cracking or bypassing wireless authentication, but Hassell does not consider this a pure attack (p. 1). Regardless of Hassell’s definition of a wireless attack, there are a variety of attacks not provided within Module 9 that deserve consideration.
The DoS attack focuses on denying the availability of a resource. Albert Caballero notes that such attacks vary in rationale, but consist of intentional, persistent efforts by one or a group of people to prohibit access to a website, device or online service (2009, p. 230). Stuart Compton has written a SANS-published paper that focuses strictly on the 802.11 standard, DoS attacks and required mitigation. Compton categorizes these DoS attacks based on the layers