A novel algorithm to detect Man in the Middle Attack in WLANs

Abstract

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are growing very rapidly in recent years. With the growing popularity of the wireless network, risk of security attacks associated with wireless network is also growing. Access Points (AP) are used in many public places like airport and hospitals to provide the users internet facility. Due to the open nature of the wireless networks, it is vulnerable to many different types of threats. Main wireless threats are eavesdropping, man in the middle attack and evil twin attack etc. In this paper one such threat MITM (Man in the Middle Attack) is discussed. In this case attacker creates a Rogue Access Point (RAP) using the same parameters as that of original AP of the network, with the help of software. We propose a methodology to detect the MITM attack. Our algorithm use combination of RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) value and sequence number for detecting this attack.