Transmission Media Security

When studying for any security certification the topic of transmission media is always present, it is one of the many sources of attacks that can be made by exploiting the media that the transmissions are made over. In this paper I will discuss the various types of media commonly used to connect computers into networks and analyze the many vulnerabilities of the different media types. Although my research did not uncover any new vulnerabilities (other than a newly discovered problem with WPA) it will nonetheless reiterate the importance of considering the media when planning for a secure network. All major media are discussed; copper, coax cable, fiber optic cable, and finally microwave and wireless media. The paper concludes with an overview of the new WPA standard and its recently discovered shortcomings.