Re: DOS attack on WPA 802.11?

[William Arbaugh]

TGi has NEVER been all that interested in DOS attacks because a number of people argued that all you need to do is turn on a spark gap transmitter. While this is true, I think it is harder (one can argue how much) to get a spark gap transmitter and use it correctly than a laptop, NIC card, and parabolic dish. As a result, the threat class becomes much larger than it should be. And BTW, you can do all sorts of DOS attacks against the base .11 protocol (sending management, EAP, etc. frames willy nilly; see http://802.11ninja.net/ as an example).

I think the bigger concern with the Michael countermeasures is:
1. Will the vendors implement them, and
2. Will they be implemented correctly?

Ideally, the compliance checking will ensure this.......but then again......

TGi had do a delicate balancing act between finding a solution that can be implemented in firmware, and actually makes some improvements. I think they did a reasonable job with WPA1 considering the engineering challenges.

On Thursday, Nov 7, 2002, at 21:07 US/Eastern, Niels Ferguson wrote:

Yes, the Michael countermeasures allow a DOS attack. This was widely
discussed in 802.11-TGi before the countermeasures were accepted.

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