Assessment and Test-case Study of Wi-Fi Security through the Wardriving Technique

Abstract

This study aims to investigate Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) within the context of its applicability as a 21st-century business tool and its survivability in a security threat-infested cyber landscape. WLAN security leverages the Wardriving technique deployed within geolocation to scan for WLAN density and explore the associated security mechanisms. Specifically, the study adopts two approaches; the first part reviews relevant research articles in electronic libraries and databases on WLAN security based on wardriving techniques. The other part comprises a measurement campaign conducted in a mid-sized city in North Cyprus. The field measurement aims to underscore the claims from the literature to find out how the security encryption technologies are used. In particular, the goal is to determine the availability of WLAN infrastructure and monitor how the security measures are implemented in Northern Cyprus. The main objective is to determine the security state of WLAN in Cyprus and examine how it can be generalized for related environments. In order to completely grasp the research issue posed in this study, data analyses from several perspectives are analyzed and examined critically. The wardriving approach has been used in this work to crawl wider regions for examination. This study was conducted with security findings drawn only from publicly accessible information emitted by each investigated wireless access point. The channel usage, Service Set IDentifier (SSID) security, the Encryption type (Open, WEP, WPA, WPA2, WPA3, and Mixed mode), WPS usage statistics, geographical locations, detailed security statistics described in Wigle CSV format, and vendor statistics are highlighted. Generally, results indicate that 21,345 WLANs were detected. From the detected WLANs, 23 (0.1 percent) used WEP encryption, 18 (0.08 percent) used WPA-TKIP encryption, 5,359 (25.1 percent) were unencrypted, and a clear majority of 9,139 (42.82 percent) used the more secure WPA2 encryption, while 13 networks (0.06 percent) used the latest WPA3 encryption technique. The results imply that WLAN security in Cyprus can be said to be moderate. Thus, this study adds to the expanding corpus of research on WLAN security and Wardriving to all parties in the wireless security ecosystem. The current study examines WLAN operations in North Cyprus while pointing to future research directions on Wireless LAN security mechanisms. Overall, the dataset from the wardriving experiment is novel and would serve future research exploration in the wireless security systems domain.

Implementation of Penetration Testing Tools to Test Wi-Fi Security Levels at the Directorate of Innovation and Business Incubators

“…After conducting a series of tests on the security conditions of the existing Wi-Fi network at the Directorate of Innovation and Business Incubator, researchers have successfully identified various vulnerabilities and weak points in the network infrastructure. These results are the basis for ongoing anticipation to increase the level of Wi-Fi network security from attacks that could potentially threaten network users (Etta et al, 2022). The security improvements that will be implemented based on the results of the penetration testing that has been carried out can be seen in table 4.…”

Automatic Verification and Execution of Cyber Attack on IoT Devices

“…A 2022 study suggested that private WLANs are predominantly encrypted using WPA2 or less secure protocols, four years after the publication of WPA3 [ 37 ]. When probing 21,345 WLANs in Cyprus, they found that only 13 networks employed WPA3.…”

Autonomous password generation and setting system with Cosmic Coding and Transfer (COSMOCAT) and Cosmic Time Calibrator (CTC)

“…If the SSID and network security key are leaked to a third party, they can connect to the wireless LAN. Currently, there is a practice among criminal hackers called "wardriving", in which searches for vulnerable access points around a city are conducted while driving in cars along city streets 5 .…”