Event Details
Protecting Integrity and Confidentiality of Network Traffic with Media Access Control Security (MACsec)
Presenter: Zain Ul Abdin
Supervisor:
Date: Mon, March 29, 2021
Time: 13:00:00 - 14:00:00
Place: Remote via Zoom - please see link below
ABSTRACT
Zoom meeting link: https://uvic.zoom.us/j/82213849148?pwd=bVFOZDFLSkI5bzhFMzFvSUV4SHUydz09
Meeting ID: 822 1384 9148
Password: 349790
Abstract:
Networks have increasingly become subject to sophisticated attacks to either interrupt network services in the form of Denial of Service attacks (DoS) or to steal information in the form of Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks. According to IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence 2018 index, 35% of the exploitation activities involved MITM attacks. To prevent networks from attacks such as MITM and to protect data integrity and confidentiality, a security solution is required to provide seamless layer 2 encryption in Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs). Media Access Control Security (MACsec) secures an Ethernet link for traffic including Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), and other protocols that are not typically secured by other security solutions such as Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) which operates at layer 3 or Secure Socket Layer (SSL) which protects layer 7 of the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model. In this work, MACsec is implemented to secure local and wide area networks. Network performance analysis is performed to evaluate the impact of MACsec on network performance. MACsec is also been implemented to protect networks against MITM attacks. Results are presented which show that MACsec successfully protects networks from MITM attack and provides end-to-end encryption to protect network traffic.