Denial of Service Attacks

When a user logs off the access point, a hacker can potentially pick up

the transmission frame in an effort to spoof his or her identity. This

essentially “tricks” the access point into thinking that the user has not

really logged off the wireless network. Thus, the hacker can gain access

or flood the unit with packets to effectively deny service to all other

users on the WLAN segment.

There are a number of packets that initiate and end the wireless

network transmission. DoS attacks (Figure 18.1) can literally take

place within any WLAN deployment. The problem is that vendors have

yet to implement a good source of interference protection capabilities

that will stop a malicious user from flooding the frequency so that

transmissions become unstable. Access point devices need to evolve so

that modified packets do not effectively deny service to legitimate

WLAN users.