AIS300 - Scheme of Work - Scholarly Commons Home

protocol, and the SSID. Lin et al. (2004) from their wardriving survey reported that a
minimum of 60% of the WLAN devices identified in their study do not have the WEP
encryption enabled while 67% of the WLAN devices are still using the factory default
SSID. The study did not report on the number of ad-hoc and infrastructure WLAN
detected in Auckland CBD which will show the growth of peer to peer wireless growth.
Hole, Dyrnes and Thorsheim (2005) carried out a comparable study to Lin et al. (2004)
by applying wardriving and warwalking methods to asses the security level of WLAN
in Bergen, Norway. The focus of their study however is on the security issue of
corporate employees connecting to the company network using wireless devices while
at home or while on the road. From the study, the authors identified that a majority of
the WLANs users in Bergen, both private users and businesses users, are only
implementing WEP a security measure. The argument brought up by the authors is on
the credibility and reliability of the WEP protocol alone in securing WLANs. The
authors recommended WPA, virtual private network (VPN), and captive portal to
replace WEP in WLAN (Hole, Dyrnes, & Thorsheim, 2005). Another similar
experiment by Curran and Smyth (2005) was conducted in Londonderry in United
Kingdom to investigate the number of wireless devices that are enabled with WEP. The
authors confered on the weaknesses of default security mechanism such as WEP and
SSID. WLANs attacks are listed out by the authors which includes the passive attacks,
traffic analysis, man-in-the-middle attacks, session hijacking, MAC Spoofing (identity
theft), IP redirection, and injecting traffic (Curran & Smyth, 2005).
The focus of the data gathered by all the researchers are on the WEP and SSID. It is
arguable that eventhough the detected WLAN device is using WEP and the default
SSID, those devices could also be secured through other more advanced security
methods such as VPN and firewalls. However, a wardriving may not be able to detect
such security features and thus require a more specific testing environment to do so.
2.7 Summary
The serious security hiccups that exist during WLAN earlier implementation such as the
WEP and open system authentication will not render WLAN growth in the future. One
the many reasons would be due to the benefit of network mobility and flexibility that is
lacking in the existing wired LAN infrastructure. The increasing and affordable
wireless devices are also a factor that generates WLAN future growth. Individuals and
companies are currently using the wireless technology to conduct important
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