Layers One andTwo of 802.11 WLAN Security

The ubiquity and convenience of wireless LANs (WLAN) is both enticing for the users and attackers alike, and as it turns out, equally accessible too. Like it or not this is the nature of WLANs and unless strong defense measures are taken, e.g., encrypting all your company's digital assets or, to the extreme, electro magnetically shielding your office, then you are leaving several potential doors wide open for attackers. Today the most widely used WLAN protocol is called 802.11 administered by IEEE. As far as a standard, 802.11 is still very much in a development phase and companies considering implementing WLAN need to find ingenious ways of securing against 'war driving' (hackers accessing WLANs from a corporate parking lot), and rely less on industry standard organizations to come up with an omnipotent solution. This paper addresses most of the fundamental security concerns by examining closely OSI layers one and two of the 802.11 standard, media access control (Layer two) and physical layer (Layer one). This will provide a foundation to implement more secure WLAN environments and avoid existing security holes.