The case for collaborative distributed wireless intrusion detection systems

Abstract

Since their inception, wireless local area networks (WLANs) have made significant progress in terms of security. They initially suffered from weak authentication, weak encryption, weak message integrity, etc. These weaknesses prompted the formation of the 802.11i standard. The 802.11i standard is a very robust standard that fixes the known problems of its predecessor. This standard also represents a significant development in security; however, it does little to protect authorized users from other authorized users. In this paper, we discuss the evolution of security threats and we make the case for the need for collaborative distributed wireless intrusion detection systems. Further, we introduce the hotspot worm and show, using infectious epidemic models, a worst-case attack that can easily compromise a million users without using the Internet and without being detected.