thinQmaster Virtual testing partner Adaptive practice exams that find your weak spots and drill them. Every answer explained. From $69
Enroll

thinQmaster

Find your exam

Five questions free, before you decide.

Step 1 · choose a vendor

In one of our camps? Your practice exams come with the tuition — they are on your study page already.

Security Operations · Intermediate

Deauthentication Attack

A wireless attack that sends forged 802.11 deauthentication frames to disconnect clients from an access point.

Definition

Because management frames were historically unauthenticated, attackers can force clients off a network to capture WPA handshakes on reconnection or push them toward an evil twin. 802.11w Protected Management Frames, required in WPA3, mitigate it.

Example

Using aireplay-ng --deauth to disconnect a client and capture its four-way handshake.

Exam tip

802.11w / Protected Management Frames is the mitigation answer.

Related terms