Page 100 - Security Today, March 2017

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Security Threats to a Wireless Network
Wireless networks as a whole are naturally more vulnerable to attack than wired net- works due to connectivity through the air, including:
“Man-in-the-middle” Attacks. A hostile adversary takes control of a communication link between legitimate parties and makes them believe they are communicating with one another, when in fact the hacker controls the link.
“Denial-of-service” Attacks. Even though hackers cannot spy on the network or inject their own data, they can put up enough interference that authorized users are unable to access their own network.
Packet injection Attacks. A hacker in- serts data packets into a network, often im- personating another device.
Replay Attacks. Attackers can sniff packets (even encrypted ones) and replay them into the air, even if they have not de- feated the encryption and have no idea what the packet contents are.
These types of security threats are par- ticularly unsettling in a public safety context, where robust, reliable and secure communi- cations are essential for crime detection and prevention. While monitoring and diagnostic tools cannot prevent these types of attacks, they do help ensure networks are not tam- pered with and that all applications are run- ning smoothly—but not all monitoring sys- tems are created equal.
Monitoring Tool Challenges
Public safety networks sometimes run high- bandwidth operations such as surveillance video or identification software (for faces or license plates, for example) on the same
network as their monitoring tools—meaning there is a large amount of data constantly coming and going on the same network.
On wired networks, this is not an issue, but some wireless networks do not have the capability to send or receive information on a single radio in full duplex; data cannot be coming in while it also is going out.
If a network is using an active moni- toring system, in which the system has to individually poll every single radio on the network and receive separate confirmation from each one that it is working, important data streams could be interrupted. Video is the most affected data in public safety net- works; if wireless networks and/or monitor- ing tools are not engineered correctly, an organization risks missed or lost frames due to these interruptions.
Because of these concerns, public safety officials need to be savvy about how what they use to monitor their network.
What to Look For
A monitoring and diagnostic tool will pro- vide the maximum benefit to a public safety operation if it has the following attributes:
Low bandwidth. The bandwidth in a wireless network is precious, and administra- tion tools should not significantly add to or overwhelm it. A tool should be able provide real-time monitoring information while not impacting the network itself by adding too much traffic.
Passive. In a passive monitoring system, monitored devices tell the monitoring sys- tem when something of interest happens or changescompared with an active monitoring system, in which nodes each wait to be asked (polled) whether anything has changed, cre- ating possible delays if data is flowing in and
0317 | SECURITY TODAY
WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY