Detection and Mitigation of Rogue Access Points

The discovery and introduction of mobile devices as smartphones has increased the need and appetite for human beings to be connected. The development of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among others, has increased this connection. However the mobile device connectivity has also introduced further vulnerabilities associated with the use wireless technology. Technology advancements have increased the use of wireless devices to access corporate network resources in corporate environments. The wireless technology by mobile phones have been greatly appreciated especially in this COVID pandemic where there is great need to decongest offices according to WHO guidelines without necessarily affecting the productivity of an employee. Network access for mobile and wireless devices including internet is facilitated by an access controller which is usually an access point or wireless router. A beacon frame is used for advertisement by access points. It contains network information needed by a station before it can transmit a frame. Mobile phones can be a big threat if configured to be so as an access point. The technological advancements have also brought a lot of applications on the internet which does packet sniffing. These internet-based applications paired with a smartphone set up as an access point can result in a Smartphone Rogue Access Point. An intruder in an organization can use a smartphone to capture packets from unsuspecting employees at an organization. An intruder can sniff the Service Set Identifier (SSID) of the organization and then deploy her SRAP with same SSID and unsuspecting employees will connect via the SRAC. The report proposes constructing the beacon frame to contain an Authentic Access Point Value in order to identify and minimize RAP in this study (AAPV). The paper should deduce fake access points to safe guard the network.