Summary

This chapter shows that attackers target networks for a variety of reasons and with several different attacks. Reconnaissance attacks are usually necessary precursors to any attack. They include sniffing and wardriving and are often an attacker's first step in choosing and analyzing a target. DoS attacks target network availability and can achieve some attacker goals. These attacks include dissassociation, deauthentication, and transmit-duration attacks. They can interrupt service for a particular user or for the whole network.

Access attacks aim to access network resources or to capture and, if necessary, decrypt data. Attacks on the authentication mechanisms include the shared-key authentication attack and MAC address spoofing. Attacks on 802.1x are also attacks on authentication and can give an attacker access to a network. These attacks include the LEAP dictionary attack and MitM attack on PEAPv1. WEP has many flaws that allow the recovery of data encrypted with it. There are attacks on both the keys themselves and on the keystreams generated from those keys. Rogue APs are also a significant threat that must be dealt with. Finally, the chapter shows that there are threats in ad-hoc networks, too.

You now have a good understanding of the threats you face and can plan your wireless network to avoid those threats; the remainder of this book is designed to help you accomplish this task.