Surveying Wi-Fi security - Presentation of Wi-Fi security measures, varius Wi-Fi attacks and a classification survey of Wi-Fi Networks in Thessaloniki

This paper is a study of the use and possible flaws of the two basic cryptographic protocols (WEP, WPA) in Wi-Fi Networks. It presents some very easy to implement methods to gain malicious access to such networks by disclosing the network secret key, using Windows Operating Systems, like Win XP. It also describes the shutter of the myth saying that the MAC Address filtering is a safe practice for securing a wireless network. There is a field research, in which we show the distribution of wireless networks according to the security protocol implemented (if any) at a major city centre in Greece. Unfortunately, according to our results, only 8% of the wireless networks are using a fairly safe cryptographic scheme, 48% is not using any security at all, while the rest is using the totally unsecure WEP encryption.