Guide to Securing Legacy IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks: Recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST Special Publication 800-48 Revision 1)

Guide to Securing Legacy IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks: Recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST Special Publication 800-48 Revision 1) Review

Wireless local area networks (WLAN) are groups of wireless networking nodes within a limited geographic area, such as an office building or building campus, that are capable of radio communication. WLANs are usually implemented as extensions to existing wired local area networks (LAN) to provide enhanced user mobility and network access. The most widely implemented WLAN technologies are based on the IEEE 802.11 standard and its amendments. This document discusses the security of legacy IEEE 802.11 technologies—those that are not capable of using the IEEE 802.11i security standard. Organizations employing legacy IEEE 802.11 WLANs should be aware of the limited and weak security controls available to protect communications. Legacy WLANs are particularly susceptible to loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Unauthorized users have access to well-documented security flaws and exploits that can easily compromise an organization’s systems and information, corrupt the organization’s data, consume network bandwidth, degrade network performance, launch attacks that prevent authorized users from accessing the network, or use the organization’s resources to launch attacks on other networks. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommends that organizations with existing legacy IEEE 802.11 implementations develop and implement migration strategies to move to IEEE 802.11i-based security because of its superior capabilities. IEEE 802.11i addresses the security flaws in the original IEEE 802.11 standard with built-in features providing robust wireless communications security, including support for Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) validated cryptographic algorithms. While legacy IEEE 802.11 networks are still in use, organizations should follow the recommendations in this publication to compensate for the security weaknesses inherent in legacy WLANs. Organizations that are planning a migration from legacy WLANs to IEEE 802.11i or are considering the deployment of new WLANs should evaluate IEEE 802.11i-based products and follow the recommendations in NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-97, Establishing Wireless Robust Security Networks: A Guide to IEEE 802.11i,1 for the new WLANs. Organizations should implement the following recommendations to improve the security of their legacy IEEE 802.11 implementations.

Guide to Bluetooth Security: Recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Special Publication 800-121)

Guide to Bluetooth Security: Recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Special Publication 800-121) Review

Bluetooth is an open standard for short-range radio frequency (RF) communication. Bluetooth technology is used primarily to establish wireless personal area networks (WPAN), commonly referred to as ad hoc or peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Bluetooth technology has been integrated into many types of business and consumer devices, including cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDA), laptops, automobiles, printers, and headsets. This allows users to form ad hoc networks between a wide variety of devices to transfer voice and data. This document provides an overview of Bluetooth technology and discusses related security concerns. There have been several versions of Bluetooth, with the most recent being 2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) (November 2004) and 2.1 + EDR (July 2007). While 2.0 + EDR provided faster transmission speeds than previous versions (up to 3 Mbits/second), 2.1 + EDR provides a significant security improvement for link key generation and management in the form of Secure Simple Pairing (SSP). This publication addresses the security of these versions of Bluetooth, as well as the earlier versions 1.1 and 1.2. Bluetooth technology and associated devices are susceptible to general wireless networking threats, such as denial of service attacks, eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks, message modification, and resource misappropriation. They are also threatened by more specific Bluetooth-related attacks that target known vulnerabilities in Bluetooth implementations and specifications. Attacks against improperly secured Bluetooth implementations can provide attackers with unauthorized access to sensitive information and unauthorized usage of Bluetooth devices and other systems or networks to which the devices are connected. To improve the security of Bluetooth implementations, organizations should implement the following recommendations: Organizations should use the strongest Bluetooth security mode available for their Bluetooth devices. The Bluetooth specifications define four security modes, and each version of Bluetooth supports some, but not all, of these modes. The modes vary primarily by how well they protect Bluetooth communications from potential attack. Security Mode 3 is considered the strongest mode because it requires authentication and encryption to be established before the Bluetooth physical link is completely established. Security Modes 2 and 4 also use authentication and encryption, but only after the Bluetooth physical link has already been fully established and logical channels partially established. Security Mode 1 provides no security functionality. The available modes vary based on the Bluetooth specification versions of both devices, so organizations should choose the most secure mode available for each case.

Guide to Bluetooth security: recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology

Guide to Bluetooth security: recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Review

Original publisher: Gaithersburg, MD : U.S. Dept. of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, [2008] OCLC Number: (OCoLC)712603834 Subject: Bluetooth technology. Excerpt: ... UIDE TO LUETOOTH ECURITY G B S 3. Bluetooth Security Features This section provides an overview of the security mechanisms included in the Bluetooth specifications to illustrate their limitations and provide a foundation for some of the security recommendations in Section 4. A high-level example of the scope of the security for the Bluetooth radio path is depicted in Figure 3-1. In this example, Bluetooth security is provided only between the mobile phone and the laptop computer, while IEEE 802.11 security protects the wireless local area network link between the laptop and the IEEE 802.11 AP. However, the communications on the wired network are not protected by Bluetooth or IEEE 802.11 security capabilities. End-to-end security is not possible without using higher-layer security solutions in addition to the security features included in the Bluetooth specification and IEEE 802.11 standards. Figure 3-1. Bluetooth Air-Interface Security The following are the three basic security services specified in the Bluetooth standard:�Authentication: verifying the identity of communicating devices. User authentication is not provided natively by Bluetooth.�Confidentiality: preventing information compromise caused by eavesdropping by ensuring that only authorized devices can access and view data.�Authorization: allowing the control of resources by ensuring that a device is authorized to use a service before permitting it to do so. The three security services offered by Bluetooth and details about the modes of security are described below. Bluetooth does not address other security services such as audit and non-repudiation; if such services are needed, they must be provided through additional means. 3-1