A Review of WPAN Security: Attacks and Prevention

摘要

WPANs (Wireless Personal Area Networks) fill an important role in local area network technology complementing traditional IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs. Bluetooth, ZigBee and NFC (Near Field Communications) have emerged as the key WPAN technologies. They are however subject to the usual range of security vulnerabilities found in wireless LANs such as spoofing, snooping, man-in-the-middle, denial of service and other attacks. However security in WPANs is not as mature as it is in Wireless LANs and further work is needed in order to provide comparable protection. This paper examines a range of vulnerabilities and security attacks that can be performed on Bluetooth, ZigBee and NFC WPANs and proposes protection mechanisms that can mitigate such risks.