FakeAP Detector: An Android-Based Client-Side Application for Detecting Wi-Fi Hotspot Spoofing

Abstract

Network spoofing is becoming a common attack in wireless networks. The trend is going high due to an increase in Internet users. Similarly, there is a rapid growth of numbers in mobile devices in the working environments and on most official occasions. The trends pose a huge threat to users since they become the prime target of attackers. More unfortunately, mobile devices have weak security measures due to their limited computational powers. Current approaches to detect spoofing attacks focus on personal computers and rely on the network hosts’ capacity, leaving guest users with mobile devices at risk. Some approaches on Android-based devices demand root privilege, which is highly discouraged. This paper presents an Android-based client-side solution to detect the presence of fake access points in a perimeter using details collected from probe responses. Our approach considers the difference in security information and signal level of an access point (AP). We present the detection in three networks, (i) open networks, (ii) closed networks and (iii) networks with captive portals. As a departure from existing works, our solution does not require root access for detection, and it is developed for portability and better performance. Experimental results show that our approach can detect fake access points with an accuracy of 99% and 99.7% at an average of 24.64 and 7.78 milliseconds in open and closed networks, respectively.