MAC Spoofing Detection and Prevention

Abstract: As we all know, wireless networks are spread at each and every part of the world, starting from home to large organizations, governments, etc. The exponential growth in the deployment of wireless access networks (WLAN) makes them an attractive target for attackers. Wireless networks are vulnerable to identity spoofing attacks when a hacker/attacker can forge the MAC address of his wireless device to impersonate another device on the network. Unlike IEEE 802.11 data frames, management frames which carries MAC address are not encrypted, which makes source authentication difficult. Several techniques exists to detect MAC spoofing such as Sequence number analysis, Radio signal strength based detection, dynamically changing MAC etc. All of these techniques can wrongly classify malicious user to bean authenticated one. In this paper, we propose a reliable and robust algorithm based on smart antenna technology and shared key exchange techniques to detect and prevent MAC spoofing.

Keywords: Access Points, Dos, WLAN, CSI, MIMO.