engleski

An Analysis of Wireless Network Security in the City of Zagreb and the Zagreb and Karlovac Counties

Wireless LAN has become widely used in recent years, in business as well as household, educational and other settings. Since the onset of wireless communication its popularity has been on the rise. Users opt for it primarily because of its ease of use, i.e. the fact that it does not require physical cables. The most sensitive issue arising in connection with wireless network use is security.. If the wireless network has no adequate protection system, any computer within range may access the network. Potential attackers may use malignant software for unauthorised access to the network and misuse it in a variety of ways. The most important form of protection lies in encryption methods for wireless networks. Initially developed in 1999 as a method of protection for wireless networks based on the 802.11 standard, WEP has proved vulnerable in several ways and has not been considered an adequate solution for a number of years. Attempts to address the inadequacies of WEP led to the development of more advanced encryption methods such as WPA and WPA2 in 2004. These, in combination with adequate security settings, constitute an efficient and practically unavoidable form of protection in terms of wireless traffic security. However, despite these facts regarding the reliability of wireless network protection, research results indicate a disappointingly high proportion of wireless networks using inadequate protection. Research on the use of protection methods was carried out in the middle of 2012.

WEP; WPA; WPA2; Wi-Fi; WLAN; security

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