802.11n set for final approval, but the story's not over

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 09 September 2009 04:28

Business IT - Technology

This can be used to block access completely, or to regulate access according to the user's location as well as identity. For example, engineers may be granted particular access rights when they are in certain rooms, but only the same rights as everyone else in general areas of the building.

On the subject of security, Gast told iTWire that despite the recent publication of a paper describing a relatively rapid attack on WPA "the data is still safe, as far as we know."

He said that the flaws found in TKIP do not provide a way of determining the key needed to decrypt data 'sniffed' from the air, and that the paper describes a particular situation (a man-in-the-middle attack) where a user is out of range of an access point but can be tricked into connecting to the attacker instead.

Gast said the paper should be taken as a warning that it is time to stop using WPA and move to WPA2 before the former is broken completely, rather than an immediate security threat.

"We all recognise this [WPA] was meant to be a transition" between WEP and a truly effective wireless security scheme, so the industry has been working to make the transition sooner rather than later.

"We've all had enough of security issues and would like to get in front for once," he told iTWire.

Looking further ahead, the industry hasn't been sitting still while 802.11n has been working through the ratification process. Various groups have been working on gigabit wireless networking.

What progress has been made? Find out on page 3.