Aimed at the problem that the vulnerable wireless local area network(WLAN)802.1X protocol is not susceptible to replay and DoS(denial of service)attacks

etc

an informal method is introduced to analyze the security properties of 802.1X protocol. The method classifies attack behaviors according to the ability of attackers

and from the aspect of the role which attackers can play in the protocols(i.e.

imitating normal protocol behavior or breaking normal communication). Then a new method

WLAN active testing

is proposed. Attacks to the protocol running mainbody are implemented by simulating the actions of the attacker which can be used to make up protocol messages. The results are used to determine whether the protocol security vulnerabilities exist or not. Testing results show that the method combines characteristics of both the attacker and the tester to cover some known protocol security vulnerabilities

and has the ability to reveal some potential problems.