A Comparative Analysis of Traditional Rogue AP and Multi-Channel CSA-Spoofing Establishment Against WPA3 Protections in a Simulated Environment

Dyeris, Elijah (2025) A Comparative Analysis of Traditional Rogue AP and Multi-Channel CSA-Spoofing Establishment Against WPA3 Protections in a Simulated Environment. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

This study investigates the susceptibility of IoT devices to wireless-based attacks, focusing on Rogue Access Point (Rogue AP) and Channel Switch Announcement Spoofing (CSA-Spoofing) techniques. Using a simulated environment with a dataset of 50 heterogeneous IoT devices, we evaluate the effectiveness of these attacks under probabilistic success rates of 90% and 85%, respectively. The results reveal that CSA-Spoofing consistently bypasses Protected Management Frames (PMF), posing a significant threat to WPA3-enabled networks.

Key limitations of this study include the reliance on simulation rather than real-world testing, the use of synthetic device profiles instead of actual firmware, and the assumption of fixed attack success rates without empirical calibration. A sensitivity analysis demonstrates that even at reduced success probabilities (70–95%), CSA-Spoofing remains a dominant threat.

These findings underscore the urgent need for mandatory PMF enforcement, robust firmware update policies, and network segmentation strategies to mitigate IoT vulnerabilities.

This Simulation was done using Python 3 and 50 different IoT devices were modelled and evaluated. The findings indicates that MC-MitM csa-Spoofing exhibits a considerable feasibility with success rates of about 44.20% in WPA3-Only and 44.23% in WPA3-Transition modes While traditional Rogue AP attacks showed lower success rate around 25.22% and 25.21% respectively. PMF effectively neutralizes traditional Rogue AP attacks when enabled (0.00% success), but MC-MitM CSA-Spoofing largely bypasses PMF protection, achieving success rates of 40.94% with PMF enabled and 48.05% with PMF disabled. The research highlights the critical need for user-friendly and effective defense mechanisms for IoT environments, given the ability of MC-MitM attacks to bypass WPA3's advanced features.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Supervisors:	Name Email McLaughlin, Eugene UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Wi-Fi; Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks; Internet of Things (IoT); Multi-Channel CSA-Spoofing; WPA3
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Electronic computers. Computer science Q Science > QA Mathematics > Computer software > Computer Security T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Computer software > Computer Security T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering > Telecommunications > Computer networks > Internet of things
Divisions:	School of Computing > Master of Science in Data Analytics
Depositing User:	Ciara O'Brien
Date Deposited:	17 Aug 2026 14:37
Last Modified:	17 Aug 2026 14:37
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/9530

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