CBL - Campus del Baix Llobregat

Projecte matriculat

Títol: A Study of Wi-Fi Security Evolution: Attacks, Weaknesses, and Countermeasures


Director/a: GARCÍA VILLEGAS, EDUARD

Departament: ENTEL

Títol: A Study of Wi-Fi Security Evolution: Attacks, Weaknesses, and Countermeasures

Data inici oferta: 22-01-2026     Data finalització oferta: 22-09-2026



Estudis d'assignació del projecte:
    GR ENG TELEMÀTICA
Tipus: Individual
 
Lloc de realització: EETAC
 
Paraules clau:
Wi-Fi, IEEE 802.11, security, privacy
 
Descripció del contingut i pla d'activitats:
Wi-Fi security has evolved significantly over the years, largely driven by the discovery of practical weaknesses in earlier protection mechanisms. Early solutions such as WEP were shown to be fundamentally insecure, which led to the introduction of improved security architectures through successive amendments. Standards such as IEEE 802.11i strengthened authentication and encryption, while later amendments, including IEEE 802.11w and more recent work, addressed management frame protection, privacy, and resilience against emerging attacks.

Despite these advances, new vulnerabilities continue to be discovered, often exploiting protocol design choices, backward compatibility, or implementation issues. As a result, understanding Wi-Fi security requires not only studying the standards themselves, but also analyzing how real attacks are carried out in practice and how effective the proposed countermeasures are.

The goal of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive and practical view of the evolution of Wi-Fi security, combining protocol analysis with hands-on experimentation. The student will first conduct a literature review to understand the state of the art, the historical evolution of security and privacy mechanisms, and the main attacks identified over time. Next, the student will study and evaluate available tools used to perform Wi-Fi attacks. Finally, selected attacks will be reproduced on a real testbed using commercial Wi-Fi equipment, and the full process will be carefully documented and demonstrated.
 
Orientació a l'estudiant:
Basic knowledge on Wi-Fi operation
Linux OS (including networking and wireless management tools)
 
Requereix activitats hardware: Si
 
Requereix activitats software:     Sistema operatiu:     Disc (Gb):
 
Horari d'atenció a estudiants per a l'assignació de projecte:

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