Closed WiFi Hotspot - Truly Hidden Network

IEEE 802.11 (WiFi) has evolved in recent years to an extent where it has become an integral part of our life. Despite its popularity, security is one of the major concerns associated with WiFi networks. New vulnerabilities have been found in WiFi systems every year and are patched periodically. There are several hacking tools available to the public for attacking wireless networks. The first logical steps used by these tools include discovering the networks and their associated vulnerabilities. The WiFi networks are not designed to be hidden from eavesdroppers; much useful information about the network is still broadcasted in management frames. The Hidden Network feature, which is present in most Access Points and Mobile Hotspot solutions, does not provide a true hidden feature, and advanced tools exploit it. IEEE 802.11w standard provides integrity to the management frames after secure associations. However, it does not provide confidentiality to all the management frames. This paper proposes a method for creating a closed WiFi Hotspot that can act as a truly hidden network by encrypting Information Elements in Management Frames. We have also shown that the proposed Management Frame Encryption key can be used to secure Pairwise Transient Key (PTK) generation in WiFi networks. Our experimental results clearly show that advanced hacking tools cannot initiate attacks on the proposed Closed WiFi Hotspots. Our experimental results also reveal that there is not much overhead to the connection sequence when implementing the proposed Closed WiFi solution.