🌊DOS / Flooding

What is Frame Flooding?

A WiFi Frame Flooding Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack, also known simply as a WiFi Frame Flooding attack, is a type of cyber attack that aims to overwhelm a wireless network by flooding it with a large volume of WiFi frames. These frames are typically designed to exploit weaknesses in the WiFi protocol's handling of management frames, which are used for network management and control.

Here’s a breakdown of how a WiFi Frame Flooding DoS attack works:

1. Types of Frames: WiFi networks use different types of frames for various purposes, such as management frames (e.g., beacon frames, probe request/response frames, authentication frames, de-authentication frames), control frames (e.g., RTS/CTS frames), and data frames.

2. Attack Execution: In a WiFi Frame Flooding DoS attack, the attacker generates and transmits a massive number of specially crafted WiFi frames to the target network. These frames may include:

   • Beacon Frames: Used by access points to announce their presence and network parameters. Flooding with beacon frames can overload the network's handling capacity, causing instability or denial of service.

   • Deauthentication Frames: Used to disconnect a device from the network. Flooding with de-authentication frames can force legitimate devices to repeatedly disconnect and reconnect, disrupting their connectivity.

   • Probe Request/Response Frames: Used by devices to discover and connect to available networks. Flooding with these frames can overwhelm the network's ability to respond, leading to connectivity issues for legitimate devices.

3. Objective: The primary goal of a WiFi Frame Flooding DoS attack is to exhaust the network's resources (such as bandwidth and processing power of network devices like access points and routers). By overwhelming the network with a high volume of frames, the attack can cause:

   • Slowness or complete loss of connectivity for legitimate users.

   • Instability or crashes of network devices.

   • Disruption of network services and operations.

4. Detection and Mitigation: Detecting and mitigating WiFi Frame Flooding DoS attacks can be challenging due to the distributed nature of wireless networks and the complexity of distinguishing legitimate traffic from malicious flood traffic. Effective mitigation strategies may include:

   • Implementing rate limiting mechanisms to control the number of frames processed per second by network devices.

   • Using intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS) to monitor for abnormal spikes in frame transmissions.

   • Applying filtering techniques to drop suspicious or excessive frames.

   • Keeping network equipment and firmware updated to mitigate known vulnerabilities.

Overall, a WiFi Frame Flooding DoS attack is a disruptive cyber attack that targets WiFi networks by flooding them with excessive management frames, leading to a denial of service or degradation of network performance for legitimate users.