Säkerheten i trådlösa nätverk

Sammanfattning: The number of wireless networks has increased rapidly among both home users and companies in just a few years. That has brought a lot of good things with it, for example the possibility to connect wireless equipment to the network or Internet from an arbitrary position within range of the accesspoint. But since the transmissions take place through the air some new security risks appear. It’s difficult to restrict the signals to a specific space and thereby a lot easier for unauthorized to eavesdrop or disturb the signals compared to a traditional wired network. Furthermore the wireless network could be abused for illegal filesharing, or become a backdoor into the company network through some employee’s badly secured network at home. A literary study was conducted to investigate the level of security within equipment for wireless communication. By way of introduction a retrospect of old security measures and standards are overviewed. Further on later developed technologies are reviewed and there flaws and possible remedies against new security threats are examined. But even though technology has improved a lot in just a couple of years, and newly manufactured equipment certainly has the capability to maintain a sufficient level of security, this does not coincide with the reality. Both research reports and media appear to give another perspective of how things stand today. This report will focus on the security awareness and knowledge among home users and companies to protect there wireless networks. The actual relationship between these security aspects are investigated through two different surveys. The first one concentrates on both home and business networks. As a result of gathering data and encryption methods for a large amount of wireless networks the survey could replay to some of the security questions. For example the ratio between encrypted and unencrypted networks. The survey was restricted to Jönköping and the examined areas were intentional chosen for separate company/industrial networks from home users. The collected data points out insufficient security for about half of the home networks, however the companies have proven for much better protection. Since the number of business networks was significant fewer, the source of error could be greater. To investigate them further concerning their security measures and knowledge, another survey was conducted. A few handpicked companies were chosen for questioning about their wireless networks. The extra information could complement the first survey and hopefully give more correct conclusions. On basis of the two surveys it’s possible to state large differences in protection measures depending on investigated areas. There is a strong connection between age, technical knowledge and risk awareness. But the fault should be divided on both individuals and ISP’s (Internet Service Providers), which delivers a large part of the wireless equipment used by home users nowadays.