Cisco Wireless LAN Security

Chapter 8. WLAN Encryption and Data Integrity Protocols

Chapter 6, “Wireless Vulnerabilities,” shows some serious deficiencies in the original IEEE 802.11 standard. Many of these deficiencies are in Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). When the Fluhrer-Mantin-Shamir attack rendered the WEP key vulnerable in 2001, it was a big blow to Wi-Fi. The members of the Wi-Fi Alliance needed a solution that could assure the general public that wireless networking was safe to use again. The IEEE 802.11i Task Group was working on enhancements, but standards bodies are slow. Cisco defined its own version of the standard to get a security solution to customers quickly. The Wi-Fi Alliance codified a well-defined subset of an early draft of 802.11i and called it ...