One of the most common methods of protecting a wireless network is to use a network password. This restricts entry into the network by requiring that any user wishing to gain access to the network must know the password. However, passwords alone do not render a network safe, as they can be discovered through so-called “brute-force techniques.” Another method of protecting a wireless connection is by hiding the Service Set Identification (SSID), which is the name that identifies a particular 802.11 wireless LAN. This ensures that the network has to be accessed manually, thereby increasing its privacy.

Use the Internet and the Walden University Library to research the various methods a person can employ to gain unauthorized access to information being transmitted over a wireless connection. Select one of the following topics for your Discussion (or develop an alternative topic on your own):

• Physically insecure hardware
• Open connections or inadequately encrypted connections
• “Man-in-the-middle” attacks
• Session hijacking
• MAC address filtering

Once you have chosen a method, answer the following questions

• How is the method you chose executed, and what are the security risks it poses?
• What are some ways you could mediate these risks?
• If you find that someone has gained unauthorized access to information being transmitted over your wireless connection by using this method, what are some countermeasures you can employ?

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COLLAPSE

Over any network, every device has an address that is known as a media access control address (MAC address) and also known as the physical address that is unique for every device. Usually, when we want to connect our device to any access point for the internet, it will be done by authenticating through a suitable passphrase assigned by the router. For security reasons, while connecting to a router, we can use MAC address filtering that compares the MAC address of a device with the list of MAC addresses that is approved by the router, and once it has been compared, it will be allowed to connect with the router (HOFFMAN, 2017).

But the problem is that on many systems, MAC addresses can be deceived easily by pretending that it has an allowed unique MAC address. Moreover, it is easy to get MAC addresses as they are broadcasted first. So an attacker can get the MAC address of an authenticated device and can change its own MAC address to the authenticated one and thus can connect to the network by pretending an authenticated user.

So by analysing this problem, we can derive that although MAC address filtering provides some security, it is not a proper solution to make our network more secure. So along with MAC address filtering the thing we can do for making our network security is to make our passwords stronger with the help of WPA2 encryption as it is more difficult to crack a strong password although an attacker may be able to bypass the MAC address filtering.