Emerging Wireless Communication and Network Technologies

Introduction
Wireless is one of the emerging technologies which revolutionize the society. Each
technology affects different ways and different level to the various field of the society.
Wireless communication provides a great opportunity and open window for all the
social parties to connect themselves to the internet and reap the benefits of digital
economy and luxuries lifestyle. People can connect with everyone from anywhere by
using any devices without any limitation due to the Wireless communication BYOD
(Bring Your Own Devices) and Ubiquitous Computing. All these new emerging
technologies are empowered by the Wireless communications. Self-driving cars, High
speed Internet connectivity, AR-VR technology, and communication are here because
of the new 5G wireless technology. Factory Automation, IoT development are some of
the benefits of the ever-accelerated development of the Wireless Communication.
BYOD and hybrid Working Environment is very new to current Society and these
trends are here to stay forever and gain promoted due to the global pandemic
situation. This was accelerated and possible due to the Availability of the Wireless
Communication. Small business reaps the most advantages from these technologies.
Business Continuity is one of the major facts that affect the sustainability of the
Business. Due to these technologies SMB environments were survived during the
pandemic.
Security and Availability are important facts when it comes to the Wireless
Communication. These Wireless Infrastructures are consisted of Access points and
Controllers. If it is company with lots of users, they use AAA server or RADIUS for the
authentication and Authorization process. Basically, these AP behave like the Hub.
Which is unintelligent version of the Switch. It just basically floods the data packets
everywhere and if the eavesdroppers are in the environment with any Wireless
receiver with monitoring mode, He / She can capture every packet that transmit via
the AP. If there is not a strong Encryption, attacker can easily gain access to the data.
If the AP is not secured properly then attackers can gain access to the internal
network easily. which can cause lots of trouble which directly affects to the business
Continuity.
As we know Wireless Communication is Open in nature and Organizations like ITU,
IEEE develop protocols to protect these Environment to some level using advanced
protocols. WEP (Wired Equivalent privacy) was first protocol industrially used with Wi-
Fi communication and now it is deprecated sue to the weakness of Algorithm. WPA
(Wi-Fi Protected Access) also deprecated and now we widely used WPA 2 Security
algorithm for the Wi-Fi security. WPA2 can implement in two ways. pre-Shared key and
Enterprise implementation with RADIUS or AAA server. WPA3 is yet to become the new
standard.
Wi-Fi6 is one of the emerging technologies which can used to completely replace the
Wired infrastructure of an organization. But the main disadvantage is that it provides
huge footprint or attack surface to the attacker to try on. because of that Threat
landscape and Threat vectors are growing day by day. Enterprise recognized best
practices with Security mechanisms like WPA3 with Enterprise level authentication can
be used to withstand for any kind of attack.

Security Testing.
Security Auditing and Evaluation must be performed regularly to maintain up to date
Secured Infrastructure. This Auditing process must be conducted regular basis and
should maintain a proper documentation regarding the status report of the results.
The Auditing and Vulnerability assessment can be performed under various topics
regarding Wireless Communication.
o Reconnaissance attacks and threat vectors.
o Access attacks
o Denial Of Service Attacks.
Reconnaissance Attacks.
pen tester can use a Wi-Fi Adopter in monitoring mode to collect and observer the
behavior of the AP and user Encrypted data payloads. If there is any Hidden SSID in
the Aps, we can check the visibility of these SSIDs. Wi-Fi adapters with monitoring
mode can easily used to capture these data using Pentest tools like airmong-ng, which
is available to download and install on most of the Linux Distributions.
Pen tester can capture data packets which are exchange between legitimate users
and AP, then tester can use to forged packets to interfere the communication between
legitimate users or we can initiate man in the middle attacks.
With the Wi-Fi adapter with monitoring mode, we can use to initiate lots of
Reconnaissance attacks.
Access Attacks
With different Security Algorithms, it provides different level of security to the
infrastructure. As we know all the encryption models are theoretically breakable. If we
can use Quantum Computer, we can easily break the AES 256 encryption key within
few minutes. But it is impossible with deterministic machines. So, everything is just
the matter of time. we can evaluate strength of each security algorithm using tools
like Aircrack-ng, which is available for most of the Linux Operating Systems.
WEP is easily breakable with modern computational power. WPA also crack able with
some effort. WPA2 is provide considerable level of security. But it is also crack able
with some attacks. But we can enforce this mechanism with AAA or RADIUS server
Authentication mechanism. This provides the industry standard security. To initiate
this attack, we need a Linux Machine with airmong-ng and aircrack-ng tools and a Wi-
Fi adapter that can work in monitoring mode. With WPA2 attack we just try to
forcefully logout the legitimate user from the AP and reinitiate the logging process.
Then we can capture those packets and crack to get the pre-shared key. This can be
avoided by using password policies which enforce the user to use alphanumeric keys
for the password. Because user normally try to break the password just by using
Dictionary attacks.
Denial of Service Attacks.
any attack that disrupts the normal working flow of the AP and Wi-fi is known as DoS
attacks. Ping of Death attacks, Jammers can be considered as DoS Attacks. If the pen