IEEE 802.11standard for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) is facing more and more problems linked to security threats, which expose legitimate users to increased risk. Therefore, the security is always a major concern for WLAN development and one of the major challenges in WLAN security issue is authentication. Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) has been widely used for that important aspect. EAP is a framework of authentication process that uses several methods to perform that process. In this paper, the flows of the existing EAP methods will be analyzed and illustrated.
Then, a new EAP method Extensible Authentication Protocol -Moderate Weight Extensible Authentication Protocol “EAP-MEAP" will be proposed. This method combines between the simplicity of deployment and management of password methods and the robustness of certificated ones. EAP-MEAP can be used widely in IEEE802.11 for WLANs (Wi- Fi and its application domains) as solution to the presented flaws. A security assessment to the proposed protocol will be presented.
Finally, the checked and verified results of the EAP- MEAP security properties using the specialized model checker AVISPA, which provides formal proofs of the security protocols.