Cybersecurity analysts have discovered a new vulnerability in WiFi connections that can allow cybercriminals to hijack a network. In fact, the main problem they have found in their recent research is an elementary security flaw in the design of the IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi standard.
With this new vulnerability that has been found in the WiFi packet buffer, it affects several devices and, not only this, but it also leaves the door open for attackers to gain unauthorized access by connecting to various operating systems such as the case of Linux, FreeBSD, iOS and Android.
Vulnerability in the IEEE 802.11 WiFi standard
Cybersecurity researchers have found a new vulnerability that comes in the very design of the IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi standard . In fact, with this hole in your security, you can bypass wireless encryption and intercept individual client traffic. And all for having a defect in the energy saving mechanism of this particular wireless network standard.
Therefore, it must be taken into account that this vulnerability affects the queuing mechanism that is responsible for storing the frames before sending them to the different recipients. And it is that, the analysts discovered that the buffered frames are not sufficiently protected from possible attackers, so they could manage to manipulate the transmission of data, impersonate the identity of the client and get to redirect the frames or even hijack the network . .
The people in charge of discovering this new vulnerability have been Domien Schepers and Aanjhan Ranganathan from Northeastern University, and Mathy Vanhoef from imec-DistriNet, KU Leuven. In fact, they have ensured that, to find this security hole , they have launched different attacks that have had a widespread impact on ‘ various devices and operating systems ‘. Furthermore, they confirm that ‘ they can be used to hijack TCP connections or intercept web and client traffic ‘.
What is the method they use?
The main culprit behind this vulnerability is the lack of instructions in the 802.11 standard to manage buffered frames and also the lack of protection within the power saving mechanism that allows Wi-Fi devices to conserve power by buffering. buffering or queuing frames destined for idle devices. With this, the way can be cleared so that a cybercriminal can manage to manipulate the queue of frames .
For example, a cybercriminal can spoof the MAC address of a device on the network and send power-saving frames to access points. This way you can force them to start queuing frames destined for the recipient. The attacker can then broadcast an activation frame to recover the frame stack. To test this vulnerability, they have used tools designed by the researchers themselves called MacStealer .
In addition, researchers have reported that router models from Lancom, Aruba, Cisco, Asus, and D-Link may be affected by this type of cyberattack. They also warn that these types of attacks can be used to insert malware content, such as JavaScript, into TCP packets.