Estudo e mitigação de ataques de deautenticação em redes wifi frente às diferentes versões de wifi presentes em dispositivos de uma rede doméstica

Abstract

This work conducts an in-depth investigation of WiFi network vulnerabilities to deauthentication attacks, focusing on the IEEE 802.11n (WiFi 4) and IEEE 802.11ac (WiFi 5) standards operating under WPA2 and WPA3 security mechanisms. The research addresses the inherent lack of protection in management frames in legacy versions of the IEEE 802.11 standard, which allows the injection of deauthentication frames by a third party. In a controlled test environment, experiments were conducted to simulate and analyze the impacts of these attacks. To this end, a set of network analysis tools was employed: Aircrack-ng was used for the injection of deauthentication frames, while Wireshark was utilized for capturing and analyzing WiFi frames, enabling the observation of interactions between the Access Point (AP) and the client Host. The evaluation of the impacts involved quantifying service disruptions and observing device responses to forged deauthentication frames. The resilience of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which often operate with outdated hardware and firmware, resulting in a lack of native WPA3 support, was also analyzed. This limitation exposes these devices to a significant attack vector, even in networks that already implement WPA3. As a contribution, this study proposes a set of technical and practical recommendations to effectively mitigate deauthentication attacks. Notably, it emphasizes the adoption of WPA3 in conjunction with the activation of management frame protection, as specified in the IEEE 802.11w standard, which encrypts and authenticates management frames, including deauthentication frames. Additionally, it underscores the critical importance of continuous firmware update policies for all network devices to address known vulnerabilities and ensure compatibility with the latest security improvements.