WiFi vulnerability caused by SSID forgery in the IEEE 802.11 protocol

Abstract

One of the most widely used, widespread technology of our day is Wi-Fi, enabling our wireless devices to communicate with each other. Its popularity stems from the fact that it is available in more and more places and is easy to use. Most of the connection steps are automatically done in the background at the client device. Thus, the devices automatically save the data needed to reconnect (the SSID, and the password). So that, when a known network is re-deployed, connection can be totally automatic without any user intervention. However, such convenience feature also poses significant risks as the devices can easily connect and automatically trust the network of an attacker with forged SSID. The aim of our research was to explore, test, such vulnerability and demonstrate adequate security solution against it.