Wireless Networks Security Privacy And Ethical Issues Computer Science Essay

Wireless area networks (WLANS) have been increased drastically increased in every area such as educational institutions, homes public areas and businesses wireless based on the standard 802.11 are mostly used in the corporate and environment such as 802.11b operates at 2.4GHZ and gives up to 11mbps and 802.11a provides up to 54MBPS. In this paper I am going to discus about the wireless network security and privacy issues and the solutions

The 802.11 standard includes some mechanisms to give the security of the transmitted data. So many papers have already written about that the mechanisms available are insufficient to provide the security

The main problem always with wireless security is the no control on the communication medium. Radio waves do not care where the property lines are drawn. When comes to wired network it uses the physical medium like copper and fiber optic cables these can be much more easier to stop the attacks on the cables. Wireless networks are become more popular in the last decade. Big company’s and general end users also using every day because of the local wireless networks: user mobility, simple and fast installation, scalability and low price. Wireless local area network enable the users to access the network with in the range of the network coverage without any wired network. Data transferred using the radio waves through the space any user can access these using a radio receiver. Since there is a problem of the protection of the data. So the mechanisms which can be applied for security for a wired network cannot be applied to wireless networks. It is compulsory there should be a mechanism which can be able to protect and give some privacy

Day by day the numbers of applications that can be supported by the wireless technology are increasing. People can access the internet from any public area such as cafes, airports, hotels etc. There are some privacy issues are concern when comes to the public hotpots that are ex: if suppose a customer want to create an account on a website he has to give the name and some other personal details as any of the above mentioned attacks may give a chance to get these details to attackers .

networks and information about the protocols which are used in the network because different protocols provides the different security services so leaking the protocol information may cause big problem to the network

Eavesdropping is technique which is used to tack the UN-encrypted wireless sessions from which the data can be extracted and that is used for the dangerous kinds and another kind of the eavesdropping is known that the attacker injects the packets in the network packets in the network this kind of attacks happens in the encrypted networks. An attacker injects the packets and receives the packet in the reverse to understand the encryption techniques and breach the network

The above mentioned attacks are mainly affected the networks but not the specific users. Once an attacker get access the network then attacker starts another type of threats starts to accessing the network devices but sometimes the privileges given to the resources in the network prevents the attackers to access the resources

Another type of attack is that the interference the sessions and after that it does not allow the station to reestablish connection with access point. Than the attacker establishes connection with access point. Now there are two connections between the AP and the two workstations now the attacker workstation can access the communication between the end user and the access point

Confidentiality is the property of the data in general security is necessary for the most of the organizations. wireless is the broadcast network to maintain Confidentiality it is not an easy thing today so many packet analyzers available in the internet which are commonly used to braking the network for example a access point transmitting the 3000 bytes at 11mbps will take 24 bit space after approximately 10hours

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Ethical issues with WIFI Networks:

When comes to the open network which offers free network connections to browse or download etc and using the GPS devices there is no any legal rules are defined to protect the privacy however node scanning is not illegal according to the US rules but when comes to the robbing the service or attacking the services and robbing the information. When comes to the node scanning is the issue of the location of the person or Access point. it may also gives the issues of the location privacy of the user or the location of an access point

In general breaching the accespoints are used to do the following things:

To access the Adult websites or to inject virus in the network

To grab the bank accounts and the money theft

To get the experience of the hacking

Recently many studies as shown by setting up duplicate access points to learn about the scanning on an average 3 to 4 attempts per day tried to access the duplicate access points and recently a experiment in London shown that two friends are trying to rob the credit card details of the customers of the store those were caught after stealing many card numbers

Unauthorized access is causes the ethical problems ex there is no regulations to act on a person who log onto another’s computer an open network this case has occurred in 2004 in US . accessing the other network or resources without the permission is comes under robbing if suppose using the someone else network bandwidth means the owner of the network no longer can use the full bandwidth which is allocated to him it’s also comes under the stealing. Gamming thefts’ like that it uses the more bandwidth than any other applications people pay money for their network connections. Some people can do anything to access the network. Day by day people are getting aware of the problems with the open networks. Now a day’s owners of the network setting passwords and applying the security. Hackers still access the internet so there are number of tools to crack the passwords some websites has been developed to support hacker to provide the general or default passwords. There are some responsibilities on manufacturers a recent study shows that more than 75 % people don’t configure the WPA security if providers are not warnings. Where this provides the high level security and the dynamic encryption provides the different encryption keys

In this paper I have taken the qualitative approach to write this paper. In 802.11 some authentication mechanisms available :

Shared key Authentication: In this approach authentication process is completed by the response to a challenge by the access point which is known as challenge and response

Open system Authentication: In this approach SSID is used for the Authentication if the SSID is known access can be granted

Centralized authentication: In this method a server is used for the authentication if the node is authenticated then only it can access the network

Conclusion:

providing the security to wireless networks and giving the privacy to the user is an big task because proving the security in the wireless means threats in WIFI and wired together and the threats provided by the newly emerging technologies so with the proper risk assessment and the planning the network security is the good way to provide the security to the because when comes to the university the level of security is different and the offices and bank security needs are different so what come to say that the protocols which are developed by the organizations such as 802.11 will cover the every end user requirements so according to the requirement of the organization need to change the security policies an the open networks are always threat to end users because it is not possible to provide the security to the every end user only way to create the security is giving the unique encryption methods to every user which is a difficult task . but open networks provides the grater opportunities to the user to connect all time