Rogue access point

About: Rogue access point is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1434 publications have been published within this topic receiving 32959 citations.

Anonysense: privacy-aware people-centric sensing

Abstract: Personal mobile devices are increasingly equipped with the capability to sense the physical world (through cameras, microphones, and accelerometers, for example) and the, network world (with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth interfaces). Such devices offer many new opportunities for cooperative sensing applications. For example, users' mobile phones may contribute data to community-oriented information services, from city-wide pollution monitoring to enterprise-wide detection of unauthorized Wi-Fi access points. This people-centric mobile-sensing model introduces a new security challenge in the design of mobile systems: protecting the privacy of participants while allowing their devices to reliably contribute high-quality data to these large-scale applications.We describe AnonySense, a privacy-aware architecture for realizing pervasive applications based on collaborative, opportunistic sensing by personal mobile devices. AnonySense allows applications to submit sensing tasks that will be distributed across anonymous participating mobile devices, later receiving verified, yet anonymized, sensor data reports back from the field, thus providing the first secure implementation of this participatory sensing model. We describe our trust model, and the security properties that drove the design of the AnonySense system. We evaluate our prototype implementation through experiments that indicate the feasibility of this approach, and through two applications: a Wi-Fi rogue access point detector and a lost-object finder.

System and method for detecting unauthorized wireless access points

Abstract: Unauthorized wireless access points are detected by configuring authorized access points and mobile units to listen to all wireless traffic in its cell and report all detected wireless devices to a monitor. The monitor checks the reported devices against a list of authorized network devices. If the reported wireless device is not an authorized device, the monitor determines if the reported device is connected to the network. If the reported device is connected to the network and is not an authorized device, the monitor alerts the network operator or network manager of a rogue device connected to the network and attempts to locate and isolate the rogue device.

Local area network having multiple channel wireless access

Abstract: A communication network having at least one access point supports wireless communication among a plurality of wireless roaming devices via a first and a second wireless channel. The access point comprises a first and a second transceiver. The first and second transceivers operate on the first and second wireless channels, respectively. Each of the plurality of wireless roaming devices are capable of communicating on the first and second wireless channel. In one embodiment, the first wireless channel is used to exchange data, while the second channel is used to manage such exchanges as well as access to the first channel. In an alternate embodiment, both channels are used to support communication flow, however the first channel supports a protocol that is more deterministic than that of the second channel. Allocation of ones of the plurality of wireless roaming devices from one channel to the next may occur per direction from the access point. It may also result from decisions made by each of the wireless roaming devices made independent of the access point. For example, a decision may be made based on the data type being transferred or based on the current channel load. Such factors may also be used by the access point for allocation determinations. In addition, allocation may be based on the type of roaming device involved, such as allocating peripherals to a slower channel.

System and method for detection of a rogue wireless access point in a wireless communication network

Abstract: Described are a system and method for detecting an unauthorized access point accessing a communication network. An authorized access point and/or an authorized mobile unit detects a beacon generated by a transmitting access point. The beacon includes identification information of the transmitting access point. A computing arrangement verifies the identification information of the transmitting access point with a preexisting database of the communication network. The preexisting database includes data corresponding to identification information of a plurality of authorized access points. The computing arrangement initiates a tracking procedure to determine a location of the unauthorized access point where the verification of the transmitting access point identification information with the preexisting database fails.

Method and system for enabling centralized control of wireless local area networks

Abstract: A wireless local area network (WLAN) includes mobile devices that are allowed to transfer wireless connections between WLAN subnets or channels having different access points. The access points connect to a central controller or roaming server that supports seamless hand-offs of mobile devices from one access point to another access point. The roaming server supports the reassignment of session data parameters from one access point to another (e.g., access point address spoofing) so that the mobile device can use the same parameters for communicating to a new access point. The roaming server also supports the seamless handoff of a mobile device from one access point to another by using a master-slave switch technique across two piconets. The roaming server also facilitates the control of access points by establishing a host controller interface and wireless protocol stack in the roaming server and another, complementary wireless protocol stack in the access point. The roaming server then encapsulates host controller commands in a packet based network protocol used for communication between the roaming server and the access points.