Use of Packet Capture (Pcap) Software for Virtual Access Point Correlation

Virtual access points VAP are a commonly utilized method to broadcast service set identifiers SSID with different privilege levels from the same access point AP. While research has been focused on securing information transmitted using the IEEE 802.11 standard and the authentication of users on wireless local area networks WLAN, little attention has been given to the security of VAPs utilized on APs to determine whether the presence of a less-privileged, less-secured SSID is a security vulnerability for the AP that hosts it. In this thesis, we collected beacon frames from VAPs hosted on WLAN APs and attempted to correlate VAPs using graph theory and beacon frame characteristics. We discovered that it is possible to correlate beacon frames using the beacon frame timestamp and, to a lesser extent, the received signal strength indicator.