{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,14]],"date-time":"2026-04-14T16:31:20Z","timestamp":1776184280816,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":21,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,7]],"date-time":"2025-02-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1738886400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,7]],"date-time":"2025-02-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1738886400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100021534","name":"University of Piraeus Research Centre","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100021534","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Int. J. Inf. Secur."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,4]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n          <jats:p>Wi-Fi Easy Connect is a protocol introduced by the Wi-Fi Alliance, as the core replacement of the Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). It aims to facilitate user-friendly provisioning methods, such as scanning a QR code, or leveraging a short-range wireless protocol like Near-Field Communication and Bluetooth. In this paper, we thoroughly examine the security and privacy properties of Wi-Fi Easy Connect (version 3.0); an exhaustive assessment that has not been previously conducted to the best of our knowledge. In addition to uncovering security issues, we identified key aspects of the specification\u2019s design that surprisingly may increase, rather than decrease the attack surface for malicious actors, when compared to its predecessor, WPS. All our findings have been shared with the Wi-Fi Alliance, and the responses regarding action items or risk acceptance have been considered in our analysis. Finally, we analyzed <jats:italic>hostapd<\/jats:italic>, the most popular software implementation of Wi-Fi Easy Connect, and we uncovered an implementation issue that allowed an attacker to subvert future connections, highlighting the risks when implementations do not fully adhere to the protocol\u2019s design specifications. Our analysis illustrates the danger of introducing security and privacy vulnerabilities in protocols, when protocol design favors usability versus security.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1007\/s10207-025-00988-3","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,7]],"date-time":"2025-02-07T16:50:10Z","timestamp":1738947010000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["Security analysis of the Wi-Fi Easy Connect"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"24","author":[{"given":"George","family":"Chatzisofroniou","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Panayiotis","family":"Kotzanikolaou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"988_CR1","unstructured":"Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) Specification version 1.0h. 2006. https:\/\/www.wi-fi.org\/discover-wi-fi\/wi-fi-protected-setup (2015)"},{"key":"988_CR2","unstructured":"Viehbck, S.: Wi-Fi Protected Setup online pin brute force vulnerability (2011)"},{"key":"988_CR3","unstructured":"Wi-Fi Alliance. Device provisioning protocol (dpp) specification, Technical Specification, Wi-Fi Alliance, Latest Version. https:\/\/www.wi-fi.org\/discover-wi-fi\/device-provisioning-protocol (2025). Accessed 02 Jan 2025"},{"key":"988_CR4","unstructured":"Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi Alliance product finder. https:\/\/www.wi-fi.org\/product-finder. Accessed 07 Jan 2023"},{"key":"988_CR5","unstructured":"Group, N.: Ble proximity authentication vulnerable to relay attacks. Available: https:\/\/www.nccgroup.com\/us\/research-blog\/technical-advisory-ble-proximity-authentication-vulnerable-to-relay-attacks\/ (2023). Accessed 02 Jan 2025"},{"key":"988_CR6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Nobles, P.: Vulnerability of IEEE802.11 WLANs to MAC layer DoS attacks. In: IET Conference Proceedings, pp. 14\u201314(1). https:\/\/digital-library.theiet.org\/content\/conferences\/10.1049\/ic.2004.0670 (2004)","DOI":"10.1049\/ic.2004.0670"},{"key":"988_CR7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bernstein D.J., Hamburg, M., Krasnova, A., Lange, T.: Elligator: elliptic-curve points indistinguishable from uniform random strings. In: Proceedings of the 2013 ACM SIGSAC conference on Computer & Communications Security, pp. 967\u2013980 (2013)","DOI":"10.1145\/2508859.2516734"},{"key":"988_CR8","unstructured":"WiFi Alliance: WPA3 specification version 1.0. Available: https:\/\/www.wi-fi.org\/file\/wpa3-specifica- tion-v10"},{"key":"988_CR9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Vanhoef, M., Ronen, E.: Dragonblood: analyzing the dragonfly handshake of WPA3 and EAP-pwd. In: IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy (SP). IEEE (2020)","DOI":"10.1109\/SP40000.2020.00031"},{"key":"988_CR10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chatzisofroniou, G., Kotzanikolaou, P.: Association attacks in IEEE 802.11: exploiting WiFi usability features. In: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Socio-Technical Aspects in Security and Trust (STAST). Springer , pp. 107\u2013123 (2019)","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-55958-8_6"},{"key":"988_CR11","unstructured":"National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): A closer look at revocation and key compromise in public key infrastructures. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Tech. Rep. https:\/\/www.nist.gov\/publications\/closer-look-revocation-and-key-compromise-public-key-infrastructures (2023). Accessed 02 Jan 2025"},{"key":"988_CR12","unstructured":"IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks\u2013Port-Based Network Access Control, IEEE Std. 802.1X-2010. https:\/\/standards.ieee.org\/standard\/802_1X-2010.html (2010)"},{"key":"988_CR13","unstructured":"Common Vulnerability and Exposure database: CVE-2022-37660. https:\/\/cve.mitre.org\/cgi-bin\/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2022-37660 (2022)"},{"key":"988_CR14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Rondon, L.P., Babun, L., Aris, A., Akkaya, K., Uluagac, A.S.: Survey on enterprise internet-of-things systems (e-iot): a security perspective. Ad Hoc Networks, vol. 125, p. 102728. https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S1570870521002171 (2022)","DOI":"10.1016\/j.adhoc.2021.102728"},{"key":"988_CR15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Vanhoef, M., Piessens, F.: Key reinstallation attacks: Forcing nonce reuse in wpa2. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, ser. CCS \u201917. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 1313\u20131328. http:\/\/doi.acm.org\/10.1145\/3133956.3134027 (2017)","DOI":"10.1145\/3133956.3134027"},{"key":"988_CR16","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","unstructured":"Vanhoef, M.: A time-memory trade-off attack on wpa3\u2019s sae-pk. In: Proceedings of the 9th ACM on ASIA Public-Key Cryptography Workshop, ser. APKC \u201922, pp. 27\u201337. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3494105.3526235(2022)","DOI":"10.1145\/3494105.3526235"},{"key":"988_CR17","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"545","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-68884-4_45","volume-title":"Security, Privacy, and Anonymity in Computation, Communication, and Storage","author":"S Marais","year":"2021","unstructured":"Marais, S., Coetzee, M., Blauw, F.: Simultaneous deauthentication of equals attack. In: Wang, G., Chen, B., Li, W., Di Pietro, R., Yan, X., Han, H. (eds.) Security, Privacy, and Anonymity in Computation, Communication, and Storage, pp. 545\u2013556. Springer, Cham (2021)"},{"key":"988_CR18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kampourakis, V., Chatzoglou, E., Kambourakis, G., Dolmes, A., Zaroliagis, C.: Wpaxfuzz: sniffing out vulnerabilities in wi-fi implementations. In: Cryptography, vol.\u00a06, no.\u00a04. https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2410-387X\/6\/4\/53 (2022)","DOI":"10.3390\/cryptography6040053"},{"key":"988_CR19","volume":"64","author":"E Chatzoglou","year":"2022","unstructured":"Chatzoglou, E., Kambourakis, G., Kolias, C.: How is your WiFi connection today? DoS attacks on WPA3-SAE. J. Inf. Secur. Appl. 64, 103058 (2022)","journal-title":"J. Inf. Secur. Appl."},{"key":"988_CR20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chatzisofroniou, G., Kotzanikolaou, P.: Exploiting WiFi usability features for association attacks in IEEE 802.11: attack analysis and mitigation controls. J. Comput. Secur. 30(3), 357\u2013380 (2022)","DOI":"10.3233\/JCS-210036"},{"key":"988_CR21","unstructured":"Bongard, D.: Offline bruteforce attack on WPS: The pixie dust attack. Presentation at Hack.lu 2014. https:\/\/archive.hack.lu\/2014\/Hacklu2014_offline_bruteforce_attack_on_wps.pdf (2014). Accessed 02 Jan 2025"}],"container-title":["International Journal of Information Security"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1007\/s10207-025-00988-3.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s10207-025-00988-3\/fulltext.html","content-type":"text\/html","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1007\/s10207-025-00988-3.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,5,23]],"date-time":"2025-05-23T05:13:17Z","timestamp":1747977197000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/10.1007\/s10207-025-00988-3"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,7]]},"references-count":21,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,4]]}},"alternative-id":["988"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10207-025-00988-3","relation":{},"ISSN":["1615-5262","1615-5270"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1615-5262","type":"print"},{"value":"1615-5270","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,7]]},"assertion":[{"value":"7 February 2025","order":1,"name":"first_online","label":"First Online","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"order":1,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Declarations"}},{"value":"The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Conflict of interest"}}],"article-number":"74"}}