A Study of the Geographic Spread and Security of Wireless Access Points
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A Study of the Geographic Spread and Security of Wireless Access Points Stuart Cunningham & Vic Grout Centre for Applied Internet Research (CAIR) University of Wales, NEWI Plas Coch Campus, Mold Road, Wrexham, LL11 2AW, UK [email protected] www.cair-uk.org NEWI North East Wales Institute of Higher Education - Centre for Applied Internet Research
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A Study of the Geographic Spread and Security of Wireless Access Points. Stuart Cunningham & Vic Grout Centre for Applied Internet Research ( CAIR ) University of Wales, NEWI Plas Coch Campus, Mold Road, Wrexham, LL11 2AW, UK [email protected] www.cair-uk.org. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Transcript of A Study of the Geographic Spread and Security of Wireless Access Points
A Study of the Geographic Spread and Security of Wireless
Access Points
Stuart Cunningham & Vic Grout
Centre for Applied Internet Research (CAIR)University of Wales, NEWIPlas Coch Campus, Mold Road, Wrexham, LL11 2AW, UK
NEWI North East Wales Institute of Higher Education - Centre for Applied Internet Research
Introduction Large uptake of Wi-Fi
Home (especially significant) Business / Industry Academic …everywhere!
Increased scope for research Service utilisation Roaming Behavioural studies
Wi-Fi Studies: Security Less work done in determining
implementation of secure services Nature of wireless means physical
boundaries are (almost) insignificant Given large uptake, especially of non-
technical, home users, poses questions: Just how big is the Wi-Fi uptake? What is the uptake / awareness of security? Are there any differences between areas?
Real-World Case Study 16km2 representative area
Residential, industrial, commercial sectors Equipment
GPS to fix locations Wi-Fi enabled laptop
Coverage of area via road network Carried out during ‘working hours’ ~10 hours total to cover area
Detection of Access Points Secure and non-secure
Real-World Case Study Reflection of ‘war driving’ scenario ‘Parking Lot Attack’ (Arbaugh et al., 2002)
Mapping Results
•1153Access Points detected
Mapping Results (Secure Vs. Unsecure)
Security
Secure WAPs 891 (77%)
Unsecure WAPs 262 (23%)
Data Rates
54 Mbps 1027 (89%)
11 Mbps 126 (11%)
Total WAPs 1153
Cluster AnalysisAttempt to identify any correlation between ‘areas’ and groups of Access Points
Cluster
# APs
Red ● 308 (26.71%)
Blue ● 561 (48.66%)
Green ●
284 (24.63%)
3 clusters don’t identify areas in this case…
Cluster Analysis
Cluster # APs
Blue ● 418 (36.25%)
Purple ●
288 (24.98%)
Green ●
268 (23.24%)
Red ● 179 (15.52%)
Attempt to identify any correlation between ‘areas’ and groups of Access Points
Broad identification achieved
Discussion of Results Majority of APs are secure (77%)
Notional study in 2002 revealed ~66% unsecure (Ward, 2002)
Still, almost a quarter not secure(!) Similar spread across area
Large uptake within residential zones 89% using IEEE 802.11g (rest 802.11b)
Clustering useful in zone identification High number of residential vs. other areas skew results Beyond 4 clusters proved ineffective
Security Indexing (ongoing work) Requires formal zone definition
(Z1, Z2, …, Zm )
Recognition of Access Point a within a Zone (a Z)
Denote, by Aj, set, {a : a Zj }, of access points in zone Zj. For any set of access points, A, denote the set of secure
points by S(A) and the set of unsecure points by U(A). Can then calculate security index, SIj, for zone Zj as:
)()(
)(
jj
jj AUAS
ASSI
Security Indexing (ongoing work)
Then require scoring or ordering from features Of the Zone:
• Level of industrial activity, property value, etc. Or of the access points:
• Density, type, etc.
Each such scoring or ordering will give a value, Vj or rank, Rj, for each zone, Zj
Calculating coefficients of correlation or rank correlation across zones will show different levels of dependence between features
Security Configuration Physically Reducing threats
Antenna positioning Aerial Footprint Not always practical / suitable…
Software-based WEP Encryption
• Shown to have shortcomings (Arbaugh et al., 2002) Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) Smart cards, USB and software tokens Hiding SSID ACL’s based on MAC or IP addresses
Hybrid mixtures of techniques is more robust Revisions to IEEE standards pertinent
Omni-directional
Uni-directional
Conclusions & Future Work Large uptake of Wi-Fi
Awareness of security Reflection of zones / communities
Data collection Mapping limited by road network
• Biased GPS accuracy • Areas with no road access
Future Work How to optimise data collection in future? (Route
Inspection Problem) More detailed detection mechanisms Comparisons with other regions
Thank you …
… Any questions?
NEWI North East Wales Institute of Higher Education - Centre for Applied Internet Research
Stuart Cunningham & Vic Grout
Centre for Applied Internet Research (CAIR)University of Wales, NEWIPlas Coch Campus, Mold Road, Wrexham, LL11 2AW, UK
