Intercepting mobile communications

Abstract

The 802.11 standard for wireless networks includes a Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol, used to protect link-layer communications from eavesdropping and other attacks. We have discovered several serious security flaws in the protocol, stemming from mis-application of cryptographic primitives. The flaws lead to a number of practical attacks that demonstrate that WEP fails to achieve its security goals. In this paper, we discuss in detail each of the flaws, the underlying security principle violations, and the ensuing attacks.