Using WEP in ad-hoc networks

Abstract

Nowadays, with the normalization of the 802.11 standard and the emerging of Wi-Fi low cost devices, many testbeds use this wireless technology to realize ad-hoc networks. The 802.11 security protocol, WEP, has not been designed by security experts. It results in a flawed protocol. The secret key shared between all 802.11 devices can be retrieved by attackers which are passively collecting data over the wireless network. TKIP, which solves this problem by periodically refreshing the keys between the access points and the wireless clients, has been standardized. But 802.11 ad-hoc networks remain unsafe. We address the problem of security in ad-hoc environments by using smart cards to handle the actual WEP-based 802.11 networking adapters to refresh the WEP key, like TKIP does in infrastructure environments