Authentication

There are two parts to WEP security described in the standard. The first is the authentication phase and the second is the encryption phase. The idea goes roughly as follows: When a new mobile device wants to join to an access point, it must first prove its identity. Ideally, the mobile device would also like the access point to prove itself as well. This phase is known as authenticating each other's identity. We need to delve into the concept of authenticating a bit more deeply here because authenticating in a WEP environment is a bit of a fool's errand.

The purpose of authentication is for each party to prove that he is who he claims to be. When you sign a check, you are authenticating yourself to the recipient, who will then use the signature to prove to the bank that you really wrote the check. In a LAN environment, every device has a (supposedly) unique number called the MAC address. Every transmission from a device on the LAN contains its MAC address so the identity of the sender can be checked. But how do you know that someone else didn't forge a message with a fake MAC address? One approach is to authenticate a device when it first joins the LAN and agree to a secret code that will be used to protect every subsequent message. Because only the true device and the access point know the secret code, each message can be validated as authentic when it is received. This is the purpose of authentication.

Now let's go back to IEEE 802.11 WEP. It has an authentication phase in which a new device proves that it is a trusted member of the group. We will look at how that is done in a moment. The access point reasons that, if the device can prove that it is trusted, it is reasonable to believe that the device's MAC address is true. Based on this trust, it will let the new device join. Unfortunately, however, in WEP no secret token is exchanged upon authentication. So there is no way to know whether the subsequent messages come from the trusted device or from an impostor. This authentication is really a rather embarrassingly pointless exercise and, in fact, was completely dropped from the Wi-Fi specification, despite being in the IEEE 802.11 standard.

As an analogy, imagine you hear a knock at the door and open it to find a man who has come to repair a utility fault inside your home. The man is wearing a utility company uniform and a mask with two holes for the eyes (okay, okay, bear with us for a moment). You ask for identification and he hands you a utility company badge. You even call up the utility company and confirm that he is scheduled to visit. The man comes in and then says he needs to go out to his van for a few minutes. In 30 seconds, a figure appears wearing the same uniform and mask and walks into your house. Question: How do you know it is the same guy? You don't know for sure. So what was the point of checking in the first place if you can't positively identify the man every time he walks in? You can now see the point of the mask in the analogy: In real life, we use our recognition of a person's face to confirm a person's authentication. But in a Wi-Fi LAN, there is no inherent way to do this. We will see later that the new security methods do provide this type of guarantee.

Despite its weakness, some systems still do use the "authentication" phase of the original IEE802.11 standard, so let's look at the messages that are exchanged. In the primer section, we point out that IEEE 802.11 uses three types of message: control, management, and data. The authentication phase uses management frames, as shown in Figure 6.1. For open authentication, the mobile device sends one message requesting authentication and the access point replies with a success message. For WEP-based authentication, an exchange of four messages occurs. First the mobile device requests authentication, and then the access point sends a challenge message. The mobile device responds to the challenge to prove that it knows a secret key and, if the proof is accepted, the access point sends the success message.

Figure 6.1. Authentication Sequences in the Original IEEE 802.11 Standard

In principle, if the access point is operating in open mode, it always accepts the authentication request and responds with an authentication success message. This is the definition of open system operation. However, in practice many systems provide proprietary screening methods, the most popular being MAC address lists. The access point has a list of the MAC addresses that it will allow to join the network. This list is created by the manager and programmed in. The authentication is refused unless the mobile device's MAC address is found in the list. This doesn't protect against MAC address forgery, but it gives basic protection against very simple attacks using an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi LAN card, or even against accidental connection to the wrong network or another person's system.

WEP authentication is intended to prove to a legitimate access point that the mobile device knows the secret key. When the mobile device requests authentication, the access point sends a random number called challenge text. This is an arbitrary 128-bit number (preferably random). The mobile device then encrypts this number with the secret key using WEP and sends it back to the access point. Because the access point remembers the random number previously sent, it can check whether the result sent back was encrypted with the correct key; the mobile device must know the key in order to encrypt the random value successfully. Notice that this does nothing to prove to the mobile device that the access point knows the key. Notice also that if an attacker is listening, you just handed them a matching sample on which to start work because the challenge contains the plaintext and the response contains the ciphertext. You can start to see why the organization defining interoperability, the Wi-Fi Alliance, dropped the use of this exchange altogether.

The one benefit of the authentication exchange in a legitimate network is that it prevents stations joining the network unless they know the WEP key. There is a time savings in rejecting mobile devices that cannot communicate after associating. This is a management feature rather than a security feature. For example, if someone were to mistakenly enter the wrong key value, or fail to update his keys, the access point would reject the authentication and the user would be notified of the failure. Without the authentication phase, the mobile device is accepted, but every frame it sends is discarded by the access point due to decryption failure. From the mobile side, it is hard to distinguish this failure from failure due to interference or being out of range.

For completeness, let's look at the frame of the authentication messages used in this phase. Although multiple messages may be sent, they all have the same general format, as shown in Figure 6.2.

• The Algorithm Number indicates the type of authentication being used:

  0 Open system

  1 Shared key (WEP)

• The Transaction Sequence indicates where we are in the authentication sequence. The first message is 1, the second 2, and the third message (only used with WEP) is 3.

• The Status Code is sent in the final message to indicate success or failure of the authentication request.

• The Challenge Text field is used in the shared key (WEP) authentication, as described previously.

Figure 6.2. Authentication Message Format