Security Review of the Light-Weight Access Point Protocol draft-ohara-capwap-lwapp-02

This document introduces the LWAPP protocol and provides an analysis of its security features. In particular, the public-key authentication, preshared-key authentication, and packet-level encryption are examined. Also, the security ramifications introduced by the IEEE 802.11 binding are reviewed. Lastly, recommendations on changes the the protocol are presented. Overall, LWAPP is “secure”. However, given access to the wired network, there are opportunities for denial of service attacks against the public-key authentication algorithm. None of the attacks presented in this document result in the compromise of keying material for active sessions, or the ability to steal service.