Prevention of DoS Attacks in 802.11s Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

Unlike wired networks, wireless networks do not have well-defined physical boundaries, which makes them prone to several security threats. As various wireless networks evolve into the next generation to provide better services, a key technology in the form of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) has emerged recently. Wireless Mesh Networks hold the promise of facilitating large-scale community networks in complex environments. There are number of issues in deploying WMNs, amongst others, security is a very serious issue. In these and other vital or security-sensitive deployments, keeping the network available for its intended use is essential. Without proper security mechanisms, networks will be confined to limited, controlled environments, negating much of the promise they hold. One of the major loop-holes in the security of WMNs is that management frames are not authenticated, and hence can be easily spoofed to cause DoS or Denial of Service attacks. We analyze the existing schemes and the proposed 802.11w draft to authenticate Disassociation and Deauthentication management frames. In this paper an amendment to the draft of 802.11w is proposed that can be used to prevent DoS attacks over 802.11i security standard. Further specific DoS attacks that that cannot be solved by the proposed draft are also analyzed in this paper.