A Policy-Based Architecture for Protecting 802.11 WLANS Against DDOS Attacks

The security mechanisms available in 802.11WLANs are considered to be extremely vulnerable to malicious attacks. This paper proposes a policy-based architecture to protect 802.11 WLANs against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The architecture proposed is based on the 802.1X standard, which forms the basis of the Robust Security Network (RSN) framework. The main focus of our work is to develop a policy-based server that can control certain actions taken by WLAN access points so that proper countermeasures will be taken whenever a DDoS attack occurs. The policies are both rule and case based and are contained in a Policy Based Security Server (PBSS). The approach taken is to simulate the behaviour of this architecture when faced with a range of DDoS attack strategies, and to use this to characterise the type of security policies required by the PBSS.