A smartcard for authentication in WLANs

Abstract

Wireless LANs based on the IEEE 802.11b standard have spread very quickly over the past few years. Nevertheless a lot of security issues remain and stop its deployment in corporations. One of the most important issues is the authentication of a terminal to an Access Point. We propose an interface to integrate the Extensible Authentication Protocol into smartcards and will show that smartcards could constitute the de-facto device for authentication in Wireless LAN as they are for GSM and will be for Universal Mobile Telecommunication System.