Exploring Wi-Fi WPA2-PSK protocol weaknesses

Many businesses and organizations prefer Wi-Fi networks in their offices, inside buildings, and in outside locations because they save cabling costs and provide the flexibility for employees. As more Wi-Fi connected networks go online, security becomes a greater concern for organizations and individuals. Although Wi-Fi networks are crucial to home networks and enterprise networks, their security is quite weak. Wi-Fi security protocols including Wired Equivalent Protocol (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), and even Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) are vulnerable to hacking by exploiting their specific weaknesses, or guessing passwords using dictionary attacks. This poses a serious risk to the security of a home or enterprise WiFi network. A study of the Wi-Fi WPA2-PSK protocol’s security flaws will be presented in this paper. It will try to define the concept behind WPA2-PSK, analyze the methods used to apply WPA2-PSK, and explore some weaknesses found in WPA2-PSK. In this paper, intensive literature review which aims to define, explore, and analyze WPA2-PSK protocol’s security flaws will be presented and an experimental approach to perform some penetration tests to explore and mitigate some of WPA2-PSK weaknesses.