Protocol used for 802.11b standard is not strong enough for information at official use only security status, expert says

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.gcn.com/20_24/security/16838-1.html

By WILLIAM JACKSON 
GCN STAFF
August 20, 2001

Wireless networks are fast to set up and flexible enough to let
workers roam through an office or campus.

But you would not want to trust anything sensitive to todays 802.11b
wireless LAN standard, said Maj. David A. Nash, an electrical
engineering and computer sciences instructor for the U.S. Military
Academy at West Point.

The Army has a moratorium on wireless LAN use, said Lt. Col. Daniel
Ragsdale, director of the departments information technology and
operations center.

They're flushing out a lot of security issues, Ragsdale said. Ragsdale
and Nash attended sessions on wireless LAN security at last months
Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas.

Not enough, off balance

Although improved standards are on the way, current wireless security
is inadequate and does not scale well, said Mandy Andress, president
of ArcSec Technologies Inc. of Dublin, Calif.

The IEEE 802.11b Ethernet standard operates in the 2.4-GHz band at
data rates up to 11 Mbps. Products for the forthcoming 802.11a, which
delivers up to 54 Mbps in the 5-GHz band, should be available late
this year.

A more secure version of the standard is under development that will
provide key management and 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard
encryption. But for now, methods to control wireless LAN access and
prevent eavesdropping are not completely secure.

Access can be defined by a devices media access control layer address,
but such addresses are easy to discover and spoof, and managing the
lists is difficult for large networks, Andress said. Virtual private
networks cut down wireless mobility by requiring users to authenticate
themselves when roaming from one server to another. And small VPNs are
not cost-efficient.

Tie it tighter

An open-source program called SLAN, for Secure LAN, available at
slan.sourceforge.net, works like a VPN but is simpler, Andress said,
and not very scalable.

Wired Equivalent Privacy, a wireless security protocol, does not use
strong enough encryption and is vulnerable to attack. All users of a
particular access point share the same encryption key, which is a
serious weakness.

WEP is a fundamental vulnerability on 802.11b networks, Nash said. Not
until its weaknesses are thoroughly repaired will wireless networks be
suitable for classified, sensitive or even official-use-only
information, he said.

Despite weaknesses in current products, Ragsdale said, wireless
networking does have a role in noncritical environments, such as at
the military academy.

Were in the business of teaching people computer science, he said. But
until more security is built in to standards-compliant products,
government should be wary of putting its LANs on the air, he said.



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