Secure and efficient scheme for fast initial link setup against key reinstallation attacks in IEEE 802.11ah networks
Lyuye Zhang, Maode Ma · International Journal of Communication Systems · 2019
Summary IEEE 802.11ah is a recently released IEEE standard to specify a wireless communication system with a long‐range, low‐power, and low data transmission rate over smart devices used in Internet of Things (IoT) systems. This new standard belongs to IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) protocol family. It requires lightweight protocols to support the low‐power and low‐latency features of the IoT devices. On the other hand, an upcoming solution of fast initial link setup (FILS) specified by IEEE 802.11ai standard is a brand‐new approach aiming to establish fast and secure links among devices in WLANs to meet this new demand. It is natural and feasible to apply it to the 802.11ah networks to support massively deployed wireless nodes. However, security concerns on the link connection by the FILS scheme have not been fully eliminated, especially in the authentication process. It has been explored that a type of recently revealed malicious attack, key reinstallation attack (KRA) might be a threat to the FILS authentication. To prevent the success of the KRAs, in this paper, we proposed a secure and efficient FILS (SEF) protocol as the optional substitute of the FILS scheme. The SEF scheme is designed to eradicate potential threats from the KRAs without degrading the network performance.