Security in wireless networks

Security has often taken a backseat in the design and deployment of networking technologies. The growth of the Internet was spurred by the availability of low-cost networking access points; provision of security did not appear to be greatly needed and thus was not a major design consideration. This mistake has been felt repeatedly since the late 1990s when, after the explosion of Internet usage, exploitation of weak security emerged as one of the biggest threats to the long-term viability of the global networking medium. The same problem may plague wireless networks. In most of the protocols that use wireless networking (local area or wide area), the security mechanism is more of an afterthought. Attacks on wireless networks are quite uncommon even though they are deployed quite widely. However, the extent of deployment of wireless networks is a small fraction of the reach of wired networks. As the penetration of the wireless medium increases, the problems with wireless security are bound to become more significant. Even today, we are aware of many weak points that exist in current wireless network designs, and we can be certain that many more will be discovered.