Abstract—enabling technologies, tools, languages, frameworks and platforms facilitating the much anticipated convergence of Web and wireless communication started to unfold, the vision of ushering mobile / wireless Internet is all set to fructify and blossom here in a big way in the days to come. Fortunately Mobile Internet / Wireless Web is a larger part of the grand vision of ubiquitous Computing (providing information and services on demand in a secure manner for any one at any time, at the desired quantity and quality, at any place through any device). But one critical, urgent and explosive issue that stands out in making computing and communication ubiquitous, pervasive and invisible is security. As security problem has encompassed the whole IT domain today, there is a serious and focused research on bringing out robust, unbreakable, durable and innovative security ideas and solutions. Thus the requirement of security has come to the center stage of research. In this new, highly important and fast emerging field security is being touted as the main obstacle for extensive proliferation of wireless Internet usage. In this paper, we have explained about the wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) security challenges along with how a hacker is able to break into the wireless network like WEP cracking, MAC attack, Man-in-middle attack, Dictionary attack, session hijacking and DoS followed by the existing and proposed viable solutions such as WEP based security using RC4 algorithms and the issues related to the same.

Index Terms—IEEE802.11i, RC4 algorithm, TKIP, VPN, WEP,Wi Fi Protected Access, Wireless network MAC layer, WLAN security.

Rathnakar Acharya is with the Alliance Business Academy, 19thCross, 7th Main BTM II stage, Bangalore, India – 560076.Phone-080-26681444, 9448871233
V. Vityanathan – HOD is with the Computer Science and Engineering Department SASTRA University, Tanjavur, T.N India –613402. Phone-04362-264101, Fax:04362-264120
Pethur Raj Chellaih – Senior Software Consultant, Wipro Technologies, Bangalore, India. Phone- 9916138511

Cite: Rathnakar Acharya, V. Vityanathan, and Pethur Raj Chellaih, "Wireless LAN Security – Challenges and Solutions," International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 258-265, 2009.