Security in Wireless Local Area Networks

Over the last years, wireless local area networks (WLANs) have experienced a tremendous growth, becoming an integral part of enterprises, homes and other businesses. One of the most important issues in the development of WLANs is providing a secure communication. Because of the broadcast nature of the wireless communication, it becomes easy for an attacker to intercept the signal or to disturb the normal operation of the network. Although the early versions of WLANs were not designed for security, standards and methods are emerging for securing WLANs. In this chapter, we study the security aspects of WLANs. We start with an overview of WLAN technology and a discussion of security services and challenges in WLANs. We continue with an overview of the main WLANs security attacks, followed by a discussion of alternative security mechanisms that can be used to protect WLANs.