Evaluating the Effectiveness of WPA3 Protocol against Advanced Hacking Attacks
Asmaa A. Ghanim, Mohammed Younis Thanoun · International Journal of Wireless and Microwave Technologies · 2025
Personal Mode Home Wi-Fi networks are an integral part of our daily lives, providing convenience and ease of access to the Internet.However, many people believe that modern encryption protocols such as Wi-Fi Protected Access3 (WPA3) provide sufficiently strong protection.This research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of encryption protocols used in home Wi-Fi networks, focusing on the currently most widely used Wi-Fi Protected Access2 (WPA2) protocol and the newer and more secure WPA3 protocol, and the effectiveness of the Protected Management Frames (PMF) against deauthentication attacks.A penetration test was conducted in a controlled, secure environment using a set of specialized tools such as Aircrack-ng, Fluxion, Bettercap, and Wireshark to assess the vulnerability of these networks to various attacks.The research results showed that home Wi-Fi networks using WPA2 protocol and WPA3 protocol (who support transitional mode) are vulnerable to hacking.deauthentication attacks and dictionary attacks were successful in hacking networks, especially when the passwords were weak or could be guessed.In addition, evil twin attacks using the captive portal approach have been proven effective in penetrating networks that use WPA2 and WPA3 (even when they do not support transitional mode) by exploiting weaknesses in user behavior.The results also show that deauthentication attacks are still effective before establishing a 4-way handshake.This paper proposes some countermeasures to reduce the risk of home network penetration.