802.11 denial-of-service attacks: real vulnerabilities and practical solutions

TLDR

802.11 wireless networks are widely deployed across consumer, industrial, and military domains, yet their assumed confidentiality and availability are threatened by poorly understood denial‑of‑service attacks targeting management and media‑access protocols. This study experimentally investigates the practicality and efficacy of 802.11‑specific DoS attacks and explores potential low‑overhead mitigations. The authors conduct laboratory experiments to evaluate these attacks and test low‑overhead implementation changes that could reduce the underlying vulnerabilities.

Abstract

The convenience of 802.11-based wireless access networks has led to widespread deployment in the consumer, industrial and military sectors. However, this use is predicated on an implicit assumption of confidentiality and availability. While the security flaws in 802.11's basic confidentially mechanisms have been widely publicized, the threats to network availability are far less widely appreciated. In fact, it has been suggested that 802.11 is highly susceptible to malicious denial-of-service (DoS) attacks targeting its management and media access protocols. This paper provides an experimental analysis of such 802.11-specific attacks - their practicality, their efficacy and potential low-overhead implementation changes to mitigate the underlying vulnerabilities.