Comparative security evaluation of classical Wi-Fi attacks against WPA2 and WPA3 networks

Sammanfattning

Wireless communication is a vital part of modern society, and Wi-Fi technology is widely used in enterprise and private networks. Sensitive data is transmitted through an open medium, making wireless communication links vulnerable to various attacks and therefore requiring strong security. Wi-Fi Alliance addressed flaws concerning authentication vulnerabilities in WPA2 by developing WPA3, introducing transition mode to maintain backward compatibility with legacy devices. However, the network administrators lack practical evidence about how secure the WPA3 transition mode is under different client behaviours, operating system differences, and classic attacks, which leaves them with a knowledge gap. This thesis addresses this gap through ethically conducted experiments constructed in a laboratory environment. The study performs a comparative security evaluation of various deployments, including WPA2/WPA3-Personal, client devices, operating systems, and configuration settings, to examine how they cope with classical Wi-Fi attacks. The findings demonstrate how unexpected client behaviour occurs and varies depending on configuration settings such as PMF, transition mode, and Auto connect, which can determine the effectiveness of the attacks. The results suggest that classical Wi-Fi attacks remain a threat against WPA2-only, WPA3-only, and transition mode networks, and that WPA3 transition mode can reintroduce the WPA2-related risks under specific conditions.