Alternative Pair-wise Key Exchange Protocols for Robust Security Networks (IEEE 802.11i) in Wireless LANs

Abstract

The security flaws of the current the IEEE 802.11 standard are well known and have widely been publicized. To provide improvements in security and enhance the current 802.11 MAC, the IEEE 802.11i task group has proposed a new security architecture called Robust Security Network (RSN). The proposed improvements in the new architecture focus on two areas; the IEEE 802.1X standard for access control and encryption using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). RSN uses a pairwise key exchange protocol utilizing 802.1X for mutual authentication. In this paper, we present two alternative pair-wise key exchange protocols to provide mutual authentication in Robust Security Networks. We utilize the same message structures used in RSN and reduce the number of handshake messages. These alternative protocols improve the timing requirements for mobility in WLANs, reduce channel contention, and decrease computational load on all users in WLANs. We also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of our proposed protocols in terms of complexity and vulnerabilities.