A Vulnerability Analysis of the IEEE 802.15.6 Display Authenticated Association Protocol

Wireless Body Area networks must assure information confidentiality provision during all the stages of its communication process, due to the sensitive information nature that will be transmitted. This proposal provides special attention to the Display Authenticated Association (DAA) protocol, defined within the IEEE 802.15.6 Standard as a secure and resilient association procedure against Man-in-the-Middle attacks. Up-to-date different contributions have analyzed theoretically the vulnerabilities of the rest of the association protocols, especially the Password Authenticated Association (PAA). This paper studies and evaluates the phases involved in the DAA protocol and presents the outcome from the assessment of the possible vulnerabilities. For this research, we developed a specific software-based scenario to contrast the affirmations stated in the Standard and evaluate the possible solutions to avoid Man-in-the-Middle or Impersonation Attacks during the association phase.