Wi-Fi management frames pose risk

In Wi-Fi networks, as you likely know, the 802.11i suite of security standards has been fleshed out to provide strong authentication, confidentiality, and integrity assurance of production wireless LAN traffic. What might be less well understood is that 802.11 standards currently leave system management frames - those associated with over-the-air management tasks rather than the data itself - running in the clear. This situation can create vulnerabilities, such as denial-of-service attacks and the potential for authentication credential theft, depending on what level of WLAN security you use.

Among the tasks for which management frames are generated:

* Client-to-access point (AP) association and disassociation requests.
* AP-generated de-authentication frames indicating that a client is no longer valid and resulting in it being kicked off the network.
* Probe responses.