The emergenCITY Distinguished Lecture Series presents a new lecture by Mathy Vanhoef, professor in the DistriNet (Distributed Systems and Computer Networks) research group of the Faculty of Computer Science at KU Leuven. The expert on the security of real-world systems will present current strategies to strengthen Wi-Fi security based on recent attacks on the networks and previously detected design flaws. His lecture will take place in presence at TU Darmstadt, with the possibility of online participation via Zoom.

Title: “Improving Wi-Fi Security: Lessons from Attacks and Future Defenses”
Date: Thursday, 20.03.2025, 5.15 pm
Speaker: Prof. Mathy Vanhoef, KU Leuven, Belgium
Venue: S2|20 Zentrum für IT-Sicherheit (CYSEC) Room 09/10 and online, Zoom-Link for online participation

About the lecture:

This talk discusses recent Wi-Fi vulnerabilities and the insights we can draw from them. This covers recent attacks that bypass network isolation, as well as previously discovered design flaws in the encryption protocol of the IEEE 802.11 standard that underpins Wi-Fi.

In the second part, we focus on how to strengthen Wi-Fi security. This includes improvements such as multi-password support for WPA3, and a more standardized approach to prevent untrusted or compromised clients from attacking each other. Both are especially important in larger networks, such as hotspots, hotel or conference networks, company networks, or any other large-scale deployments, where not all clients can be trusted.

About the Speaker:

Mathy Vanhoef is a professor at KU Leuven in Belgium, where he researches network and software security across the full network stack. He previously discovered the WPA2 KRACK attack and the WPA3 Dragonblood attack. He also collaborated with industry players to design and standardize two new Wi-Fi defenses. One of these defenses, beacon protection, has been mandatory since Wi-Fi 7.

Further information: https://www.mathyvanhoef.com/