Wi-Fi Security Threats - an Integrative Review

"What are possible threats against Wi-Fi infrastructure?" is the main research question this integrative literature-review wants to find an answer to. Whether those threats are adequately dealt with, and how impactful the real-world implications appeared to be, are additional research goals. It was aimed to classify and illustrate those threats and attacks in an attack tree, demonstrating the possible attack vectors and paths.

The literature-review is based on scientific sources (papers, articles) in the field of vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi security, protocol weaknesses and flaws, and cyber-attacks on Wi-Fi networks. The sources were selected based on a set of criteria and keywords, such as year and type of publication, and publication libraries.

In a first part each selected source is summarized, highlighting their individual focus on the discussed threats or attacks and the resulting findings. The second part, the literature-review, consists of interwove comparisons of the sources' topics and findings, categorized by threats or attack types.

The literature-review concludes that many of the presented threats and attacks are enabled by inherent vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi protocols or implementation flaws. Some vulnerabilities may have been partially addressed in amendments to Wi-Fi standards, while others persist due to backward compatibility requirements.

Regarding improvements and future fields of study, the literature-review recognized the need for more rigorously defined standards in Wi-Fi technology. Implementations should be formally verified in a way to eliminate lacking adherence to standards and to reduce risks of bugs. Testing of Wi-Fi implementations must be expanded to include a broader range of devices, real-world environments, and configurations. This includes vendor-specific features and implementations, which often rely on Wi-Fi standards but due to ambiguous specifications lack security.