A Software-Defined Testbed for Quantifying Deauthentication Resilience in Modern Wi-Fi Networks

2026-02-26

AI Summary

This study addresses the vulnerability of unprotected management frames in Wi-Fi networks to deauthentication attacks, which can cause denial-of-service disruptions. The authors construct a software-defined radio–based testbed to systematically evaluate the resilience of five wireless security configurations under real-world attack conditions. For the first time, they quantitatively demonstrate the practical effectiveness of Protected Management Frames (PMF) and WPA3 in mitigating such attacks: open networks, WPA1, and WPA2 without PMF are shown to be entirely vulnerable, whereas WPA2 with PMF enabled and WPA3 successfully resist deauthentication attacks in experimental trials. This work provides empirical evidence to guide secure Wi-Fi deployment practices.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Security
• Computer Vision: Adversarial Attacks & Robustness
• Natural Language Processing: Safety and Robustness

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Virtualization and resource management in Web systems and infrastructures
• Responsible Web: Measurement, analysis, and circumvention of Web censorship

Abstract

Wi-Fi deauthentication attacks remain a practical denial-of-service (DoS) threat by exploiting unprotected management frames to disrupt client connectivity. In this work, we introduce a software-defined testbed to measure Wi-Fi resilience to deauthentication attacks. We experimentally evaluate five wireless security configurations: open networks, WPA1, WPA2 without Protected Management Frames (PMF), WPA2 with PMF, and WPA3. Using controlled experiments, we measure client disconnection rates, packet injection volume, and time-to-disruption under each configuration. Packet-level behavior is analyzed using standard wireless auditing tools. Open networks, WPA1, and WPA2 without PMF proved entirely vulnerable to deauthentication, while no successful attacks were observed for WPA2 with PMF or WPA3 under tested conditions. These findings confirm the effectiveness of management-frame protection and highlight the continued risk posed by legacy or misconfigured wireless deployments.

Problem

• deauthentication attack
• Wi-Fi resilience
• denial-of-service
• management frames
• wireless security

Innovation

• software-defined testbed
• deauthentication resilience
• Protected Management Frames (PMF)
• Wi-Fi security
• denial-of-service (DoS)