Wireless LAN: Introduction & WEP Outline

1. Xiuzhen Chengcheng@gwu.edu Csci388Wireless and Mobile Security – Wireless LAN: Introduction, WEP

2. Outline • Challenges in Wireless Communications • Introduction to IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN • Break (5 minutes) • Intercepting Mobile Communications: The Insecurity of 802.11 • Wireless Security’s Future

3. Uniqueness of Wireless Communication • Uniqueness of Wireless Communication • Interference and Noise; Full connectivity can not be assumed; Battery usage; Security • Requirements of a wireless MAC standard: • Single MAC to support multiple PHY mediums • Robust to interference • Need to deal with the hidden/exposed terminal problem • Need provision for time bounded services • Support for power management to save battery power • Ability to operate world wide: ISM band

4. D A C A C B B C unnecessarily defers its transmission to D At B: Transmission from C collides with transmission from A Problems of wireless networks • Hidden Terminal • Decrease throughput • Increase delay • Exposed Terminal • Decrease channel utilization • Limited energy • Network partition • Mobility • Security

5. 802.11 System Architecture • Two basic system architectures • Ad hoc • Infrastructure based • Access Point • Stations select an AP and “associate” with it • Support roaming • Provide other functions • time synchronization (beaconing); power management, PCF;

6. 802.11 Protocol Stack

7. 802.11 MAC Layer • Three basic access mechanisms • CSMA/CA; DCF(CSMA/CA+RTS/CTS); PCF • DIFS: lowest priority, asynchronous data • PIFS: media priority, time-bounded service • SIFS: highest priority, short control message • Carrier sense at two levels • Physical carrier sense: done by physical layer • Virtual carrier sense at MAC layer using Network Allocation Vector (NAV) set while RTS/CTS/Data/Ack are overheard: solves problem of Hidden and Exposed terminal • Reduces collision by deferring transmission if any of the carrier sense mechanisms sense the channel busy

8. DCF Basic Access • Basic Access • When a STA has data to send, it senses medium • The STA may transmit a MAC Protocol Data Unit (MPDA) when medium idle time is greater or equal to DIFS • If medium is busy, wait for a random backoff time

9. DCF • Backoff Procedure • Backoff procedure is invoked for a STA to transfer a frame but the medium is busy • Set Backoff Timer to be random backoff time • Backoff Timer start decreasing after an idle time of DIFS following the medium busyness • Backoff Timer is suspended when medium is busy, and won’t resume until the medium is idle for DIFS • A frame may be transmitted immediately when Backoff Timer is 0

10. DCF • Recovery procedures • Collision may happen during contention • When collision happens, retransmission with a new random selection of the backoff time, contention window is doubled. • No special rights for retransmission

11. DCF • Random backoff time=random()xaSlotTime • aSlotTime: the value of the correspondingly named PHY characteristic (20s for DSSS) • Random(): a random integer uniformly distributed over [0, CW] • CW (contention window) • Increases exponentially after each retry fails (so does average backoff time. Why to do this?) • Keep constant after reaching the maximum • Reset after a successful transmission

12. DCF RTS/CTS Scheme • RTS/CTS Scheme • Four way handshake: RTS-CTS-DATA-ACK • NAV (Network Allocation Vector) • An indicator, maintained at each STA, for the period that transmission will not be initiated • Setting and resetting NAV according to “Duration” in MAC header when receiving a valid frame

13. DCF – Fragmentation • Control of the channel • Once the STA has contented for the channel, it shall continue to send fragments until • All fragments of a MSDU or MMPDU have been sent • An ACK is not received • STA is restricted from sending additional fragments by PHY layer • Duration field • RTS/CTS: time till the end of ACK0 • Fragments/ACK: time till the end of the ACK for the next fragment • Last fragment/ACK: length of ACK/0

14. PCF • Only available for infrastructured architecture, why? • PCF is on top of DCF • Super frame contains a contention-free period and a contention period • Procedure (assume the media is just free): • Point coordinator (PC) polls s1 after PIFS; s1 replied with data • PC continues to poll other stations • After no reply from a station, PC waits for PIFS time, then continues to poll other stations • After finishing, send CFE message. Then contention period starts. • Question: how time-bounded service is provided?

15. Other Considerations • Syschronization • Beacon signal • Power-Control • Sleep and awake states • Wakeup periodically every TIM interval • Roaming • Association request and response

16. Break

17. The WEP Protocol • Security goals of the WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) protocol: • Confidentiality: Prevent an adversary from learning the contents of your wireless traffic. • Access Control: Prevent an adversary from using your wireless infrastructure. • Data Integrity: Prevent an adversary from modifying your data in transit. • WEP Protocol was designed to protect the confidentiality of user data from eavesdropping • Part of 802.11 • It has been integrated by manufacturers into their 802.11 hardware. • Widespread in use.

18. The WEP Protocol (cont.) • Sender and receiver share a secret key k. • Two classes of WEP implementation: • classic WEP as documented in standard (40-bit key) • extended version developed by some vendors (128-bit key)

19. The WEP Protocol (cont.) • In order to transmit a message M: P = <M, c(M)> pick Initial Vector(IV) v and generate RC4(v,k)—is a keystreamC = P  RC4(v,k) A -> B: v, (P  RC4(v,k)) • Upon receipt:generate RC4(v,k)P’ = C  RC4(v,k) = P  RC4(v,k)  RC4(v,k) = P check if c=c(M) If so, accept the message M as being the one transmitted

20. WEP, Pictorially

21. P sender C receiver P An Example

22. Attack Practicality • Access to the transmitted data. • Need equipment capable of monitoring 2.4 GHz frequencies. • Need to understand the physical layer of 802.11 protocol. • For active attacks, need equipment capable to transmit at the same frequencies. • High cost, but not impractical: • “corporate espionage can be a highly profitable business.” • Passive attacks possible with off-the-shelf equipment by modifying driver settings (Lucent PCMCIA Orinoco wireless card).

23. The “Two-Time Pad” Problem • You must never encrypt two messages with the same keystream K. • Suppose P1 and P2 are both encrypted with the same K. • Then C1 = P1  K, and C2 = P2  K. • But then C1  C2 = P1  K  P2  K = P1  P2 • So the adversary learns the XOR of two plaintexts! • Does he know (or can guess) parts of one plaintext? • Usually, just knowing the XOR of two plaintexts is enough to recover them.

24. What Does WEP Do? • The keystream for WEP is RC4(v,k). • k is a fixed shared secret, that changes rarely, if ever (in many setups, every user shares the same k). · If two packets ever get transmitted with the same value of v, you reuse the keystream. • Since v gets transmitted in clear for each packet, the adversary can even easily tell when a value of v is reused (a "collision"). • How many possible values of v are there? • v only occupies 24 bits of the header = at most there are 2^24 (about 16 million of v). • After 16 million packets, you have to repeat one! • Birthday paradox for random 24-bit v • Many 802.11 cards reset their IV counter to 0 every time they were activated, and incremented by 1 for each packet transmitted.

25. What Does WEP Do? (cont.) • This means that low IV values get reused at the beginning of every wireless session. • Usually use the same secret k, and often many different people use the same k. • So you can find collisions between packets sent by different people! • This makes collisions much more common.

26. Decryption Dictionaries • Adversary knows both the C and the P for some packets encrypted with a given IV v. • Easy if he knows the P (pings, or spam email!). • He can also do it passively by watching for collisions. • RC4(k,v) = P  C • Note: no need to know the value of the shared secret k. • Store keystream in a table, indexed by v. • Next time a packet with an IV stored in the table passes by, look up the keystream, XOR it against the packet, and read the data! • Table is at most 1500 * 2^24 bytes = 24 GB • If the cards that are being used have the IV-reset-to-0 property, then most IV's will be small, and the dictionary will be even smaller!

27. Message Authentication in WEP • An 802.11 receiver will accept a packet if, after decryption, it contains a correct checksum of the plaintext. • The checksum algorithm used is CRC-32. • CRC's are used to detect random errors; they are useless against malicious errors. • There is already a CRC at a lower layer of the protocol to detect random bit errors in transmission. • CRC-32 Has the following properties: • It is independent of the shared secret and the IV. • It is linear: c(M  D) = c(M)  c(D) • We can make a controlled modification and get unnoticed.

28. Message Modification • Assume a message M was transmitted, and the ciphertext was C and the IV was v (i.e. C and v are known to the adversary). • C = RC4(v,k)  <M,c(M)> • A -> B: <v,C> • Possible to find C’ such that it decrypts to M’ and M’ = M  D D = arbitrarily chosen by the attacker • Adversary -> B: <v,C’> • C’= C  <D,c(D)> = RC4(v,k)  <M,c(M)>  <D,c(D)> = RC4(v,k)  <M  D, c(M)  c(D)> = RC4(v,k)  <M’, c(M  D)> = RC4(v,k)  <M’, c(M’)> • Receiver checks that c’ = c(M’) • Accept message M’ as the one transmitted.

29. Message Injection • The adversary just needs to know a single plaintext, and its corresponding encrypted packet. • A -> B: <v,C> • P  C = P  RC4(v,k)  P = RC4(v,k) • Construct M’ and P’ = <M’,c(M’)> • C’ = RC4(v,k)  P’ • “A” -> B: <v,C’>

30. Authentication Protocol • Goal: the base station verifies that a client joining the network really knows the shared secret key k. • The base station sends a challenge string to the clientB->A: M • The client sends encrypted challenge:A -> B: v, <M,c(M)>  RC4(v,k) • The base station checks if the challenge is correctly encrypted, and if so, accepts the client. • Adversary sees a challenge/response pair for a given key k; he can extract v and RC4(v,k). • Adversary can execute authentication protocol himself!

31. Authentication Protocol (cont.) • Adversary connects to the network himself: • The base station sends a challenge string M' to the adversary. • The adversary replies with v, <M',c(M')>  RC4(v,k) • This is the correct response, so the base station accepts the adversary. • Success even though he never did learn the value of k.

32. Message Decryption • Useful symmetry property: the operation of encryption is the same as the operation of decryption with the same key. • An adversary can decrypt packets with the help of the base station! Ways to do it: • Double-encryption • IP Redirection • Reaction attacks

33. Double Encryption • Join the network. • Use a second Internet connection to send the packet to his computer over the wireless network. • The base station will encrypt this packet a second time: C’ = (P  RC4(v,k))  RC4(v,k) = P • Timing important to get the same IV, but not so difficult because the base station uses sequential IV’s.

34. IP Redirection • Join the network (authentication spoofing) • Take the packet to be decrypted, modify the IP address as being his. • Transmit the modified packet to the base station for decryption. • Base station will send the plaintext on its merry way, straight to the adversary's machine.

35. IP Redirection (cont.) • The only headache: find the original destination IP address. • Not difficult: all the incoming traffic has a destination IP address on the wireless subnet, easy to determine. • Fix the IP checksum.

36. IP Redirection (cont.) • Suppose original IP address = DH, DL • Modified IP address = DH’, DL’ • newCRC = oldCRC + DH’+ DL’- DH - DL • Trick: we only know to do XOR! • Ways to go around this: • IP CRC is known: do arithmetic • IP CRC not known: get lucky • arrange that newCRC = oldCRC: change other fields.

37. Reaction Attacks • “Drawback”: the packet to be decrypted needs to be a TCP packet. • Useful property: a TCP packet with TCP checksum invalid is silently dropped. • Otherwise, get back an ACK packet (easy to identify by its size). • Monitor the reaction of a recipient of a TCP packet and use that to infer info about the unknown plaintext. • Intercept <v,C> • Flip a few bits in C, recompute checksum, wait (patiently) to see if an ACK is sent back.

38. Reaction Attacks (cont.) • A clever choice of what bits to flip ensures TCP checksum remains undisturbed exactly when Pi  Pi+16 = 1 holds. • Each time we check the reaction of the recipient to a modified packet, we learn one more bit of the plaintext. • TCP CRC = 1’s complement addition of the 16-bit words of message M. • 1’s complement addition ~ modulo 2^16 -1 • C’ = C  D, D = bit positions to flip. • We choose D: pick i arbitrarily, set positions i and i+16 of D to 1 and the rest to 0. • Convenient property: P  D = P mod 2^16-1 holds when Pi  Pi+16 = 1

39. Countermeasures • Just don't assume it's secure. • Treat your wireless network as a public network. • Put the wireless network outside your firewall. • Use another authentication protocol for packets coming from the wireless network to internal intranet (e.g. VPN, IPSec, ssh). • Long IV's which never repeat for the lifetime of the shared secret (and are never duplicated across machines sharing the same secret). • Replace the shared key more often. • Use a strong Message Authentication Code (instead of the CRC) which depends on the key and IV.

40. Conclusions • Attacks on the Wired Equivalent Privacy protocol which defeat each of the security goals of: • Confidentiality: We can read WEP-protected traffic. • Access Control: We can inject traffic on WEP-protected networks. • Data Integrity: We can modify WEP-protected traffic in transit.

41. Wireless Security’s Future • IEEE 802.11i • Phased deployment process due to the large number of 802.11 users • Three major parts of 802.11i: • Temporal Key Integrity protocol (TKIP), enhancing and replacing WEP • Counter mode CBC-MAC for link-layer data confidentiality and integrity • 802.1x for access control

42. Temporal Key Integrity Protocol • Immediate replacement of WEP • Uses 48-vit vectors • Uses 128-bit encryption key • Uses per-packet keying • A shared base key, a client’s MAC address, and a packet’s sequence number create a unique key for each packet • Avoid data-harvesting problem • Periodically rotates the broadcast key • Avoid data-harvesting problem • Uses a message integrity code (MIC) • A cryptographically protected one-way hash • Immediate packet tampering detection • TKIP is a part of WPA by the WiFi Alliance

43. Counter Mode with CBC-MAC • Design goals: confidentiality, integrity and authentication • 128-bit AES • 48-bit IV • 128-bit cipher block chaining with MAC • A required component of any 802.11i implementation

44. 802.1x • A port-based authentication protocol • Before a successful 802.1x authentication, a wireless client is only allowed access to the authentication server. All other traffics are blocked at the AP • After a successful 802.1x authentication, the client is granted access to the network • UMD researchers found that 802.1x suffers from two attacks: session hijacking and man-in-the-middle

45. Readings and Homeworks • Readings for the lecture in Sep 9. Submit your reading report for the papers onDOMINO and DoS Attack: • C.D.J. Welch and M.S. D. Lathrop, A survey of 802.11a wireless security threats and security mechanisms, 2003. • M. Raya, J. P. Hubaux,, and I. Aad DOMINO: A System to Detect Greedy Behavior in IEEE 802.11 Hotspots, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, Boston, June 2004 • J. Bellardo and S. Savage, 802.11 Denial-of-Service Attacks: Real Vulnerabilities and Practical Solutions, Proceedings of USENIX Security Symposium, August 2003. • 2 SepReadings for the lecture in Sep 2: • M.J. Hanson and D. McNamee, Efficient Reading of Papers in Science and Technology. • N. Borisov, I. Goldberg, and D. Wagner, Intercepting Mobile Communications: The Insecurity of 802.11, MobiCom 2001, pp. 180-188. • B. Potter, Wireless Security's Future, IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine 01(4), pp. 68-72, July-Aug. 2003.

46. Questions?