Generating Representative Attack Test Cases for Evaluating and Testing Wireless Intrusion Detection Systems

Abstract

Openness of wireless communication medium and flexibility in dealing with wireless communication protocols and their vulnerabilities create a problem of poor security. Due to deficiencies in the security mechanisms of the first line of defense such as firewall and encryption, there are growing interests in detecting wireless attacks through a second line of defense in the form of Wireless Intrusion Detection System (WIDS). WIDS monitors the radio spectrum and system activities and detects attacks leaked from the first line of defense. Selecting a reliable WIDS system depends significantly on its functionality and performance evaluation. Comprehensive and credible evaluation of WIDSs necessitates taking into account all possible attacks. While this is operationally impossible, it is necessary to select representative attack test cases that are extracted mainly from a comprehensive classification of wireless attacks. Dealing with this challenge, this paper proposes a holistic taxonomy of wireless security attacks from the perspective of the WIDS evaluator. This proposed taxonomy includes all relevant necessary and sufficient dimensions for wireless attacks classification and it helps in generating and extracting the representative attack test cases.