Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Towards Using Certificate-Based Authentication As A Defense Against Evil Twins In 802.11 Networks, Travis S. Hendershot

Theses and Dissertations

Wireless clients are vulnerable to exploitation by evil twins due to flaws in the authentication process of 802.11 Wi-Fi networks. Current certificate-based wireless authentication protocols present a potential solution, but are limited in their ability to provide a secure and usable platform for certificate validation. Our work seeks to mitigate these limitations by exploring a client-side strategy for utilizing alternative trust models in wireless network authentication. We compile a taxonomy of various trust models for conducting certificate-based authentication of wireless networks and methodically evaluate each model according to desirable properties of security, usability, and deployability. We then build a platform …