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Master Thesis Proposal By Nirmala Bulusu Advisor – Dr. Edward Chow. Implementation of Protected Extensible Protocol (PEAP) – An IEEE 802.1x wireless LAN standard for authentication. What is PEAP ?. PEAP is an 802.1x authentication protocol typically designed for access control in wireless LANs
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Master Thesis ProposalBy Nirmala BulusuAdvisor – Dr. Edward Chow Implementation of Protected Extensible Protocol (PEAP) – An IEEE 802.1x wireless LAN standard for authentication
What is PEAP ? • PEAP is an 802.1x authentication protocol typically designed for access control in wireless LANs • It makes use of two well known protocols • Extensible Authentication Protocol • Transport Layer Security
IEEE 802.1x - Overview • Is a port based access control mechanism. • Transports data between the Client (Supplicant) and the server [RADIUS]
What is EAP ? • Protocol for communication between Supplicant and an Authenticator • EAP messages encrypted directly over a LAN medium – EAPOL defined • Access Point [Authenticator] forwards these EAP messages encapsulated in RADIUS packets to RADIUS server • EAP allows authenticator to serve only as an carrier without needing to know the EAP authentication protocol type.
EAP–TLS • Transport Layer Security [TLS] exchange of messages provides mutual authentication with both client and server validating each other via certificates. • Imposes substantial administrative burden • Requires a full fledged PKI infrastructure support established. • The client certificates must be managed, revoked and distributed
Need for PEAP • Wireless AP broadcasts all traffic hence can easily collect data if within the broadcast range • PEAP answers this by transmitting user-sensitive data in an encrypted channel - the established TLS tunnel • Wireless Encryption seen to be weak • Using PEAP the data within the tunnel cannot be decrypted without the TLS master secret and the key is not shared with the Access point • With PEAP only server side PKI infrastructure based digital certificates are used to authenticate EAP servers.
Goal of Thesis • Implement a basic server-side working model of the PEAP protocol on a Linux Server based on the IETF internet draft proposal [www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/ draft-josefsson-pppext-eap-tls-eap-06.txt ] • Perform a comparison between the two 802.1x EAP standards – TTLS and PEAP. • Deliverables • A thesis report documenting the implementation details of the PEAP module on freeradius and xsupplicant. Should also include the configuration details of the wireless network set-up and lessons learned in this thesis project. • The source code of the PEAP module.
Thesis Plan • Work Done Till Date • Installing and Configuring the Client Side software – Xsupplicant [www.open1x.org] • Installing and configuring Radius Server - FreeRadius [www.freeradius.org] • Installing and configuring OpenSSL. [www.openssl.org] • Set-up a test bench to test EAP-TLS with the above configured software. • Running Xsupplicant, Cisco AP-1200 and FreeRadius with EAP type set to TLS. Successfully established the Authentication.
Thesis Plan Contd…. • Work in Progress • Study and analyze both the Client [Xsupplicant] and Server side [Free Radius] implementations of the IEEE 802.1x EAP protocol. • Work to be done • Implement the Server Side Code with PEAP modules to authenticate PEAP Users. • Configure Xsupplicant, FreeRadius and the Access Point to support EAP type PEAP. • Test the implementation of the PEAP modules. • Run and test Xsupplicant, Cisco AP-1200 and FreeRadius set-up configured to EAP type TTLS and EAP type PEAP. • Study and analyze the logs showing the protocol handshakes using packages like ethereal and tcpdump. • Compare performance of the two protocols TTLS and PEAP. • Write Thesis
References [1] Protected EAP (IETF draft, work in progress) March 2003: http://www.globecom.net/ietf/draft/draft-josefsson-pppext-eap-tls-eap-06.html [2] IEEE 802.1X Port Based Network Access Control, by Paul Congdon: http://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/docs2000/P8021XOverview.PDF [3] The Unofficial 802.11 Security Web Page. Security analyses of 802.11 http://www.drizzle.com/~aboba/IEEE/ [4] PPP Extensible Authentication Protocolhttp://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2284.txt [5] PPP EAP-TLS Authentication Protocol http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2284.txt [6] PEAP – Product Documentation http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/proddocs/entserver/sag_ias_protocols_peap.asp