Research On WEP-based Security Mechanism For WLAN

With the continuous development of computer technology and network demand retaining expanding, wireless local area network technology development become more and more hot. People now much more hope to access to INTERNET and INTRANET, browse web pages, send e-mail and use other Internet applications conveniently, through mobile communication equipments such as mobile phones and mobile computers, while moving. China mobile communications operators have also introduced the faster technology of the third generation mobile communication technology to develop the wireless networks. Based on the above situation, wireless network applications have been accepted and used by more and more people. WLAN (wireless LAN) access technology due to its characteristics such as flexible network construction, convenient deployment, and fast authentication has become the important development direction of combining the wireless communication and INTERNET technology, and has brought great convenience for our life, learning and work.In wireless network communications, security mechanism is particularly important. WEP (Wired Equivalent Protocol) security mechanism is one of widely used security protocols. The WEP protocol is used as a means of data encryption for wireless transmission between two devices, in order to prevent the illegal user wiretapping or intruding wireless networks. Along with the unceasing development of wireless network technology, the WEP protocol has also exposed the early design flaws, and wireless network transmission security is facing great influence.To improve the WEP security mechanism, a so-called "Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP)" is used, and this protocol and algorithm has improved the security of using WEP key. It changes the method of getting a key and spins (changes) the key, and in order to prevent packet forgery, it also increases the message integrity check function, making the wireless network security increased greatly.At the same time, combined with WEP problems with the current domestic and foreign improvement technologies for WLAN, the WLAN security architecture composed of three parts:a authentication module, encryption and data integrity checking module and key management module is introduced. This is AES_CCM mode. Each module for AES CCM mode consists of some small modules or protocols. Modules are associated with each other and interactive, those constitute the WLAN security system with the boundary access security, data confidentiality and data integrity within WLAN and so on.Finally, protocol WPA currently widely used in WLAN is introduced.