Post-Quantum (In)Security of Current Wi-Fi Networks

Xu Guang Huang, Dharmendra Kumar Sharma

Shakir Sajad

Nils Lohmiller, Lukas Köder, Bastian Buck +3 more

Wireless networks, particularly Wi-Fi, have become essential in modern life. However, the growing capabilities of quantum computers pose a serious threat to the cryptographic foundations of current Wi-Fi security mechanisms. In this work, we provide a first assessment of how quantum computing affects the security of existing Wi-Fi protocols. We show that all examined Wi-Fi protocols are vulnerable to a CRQC. To ensure long-term security, these protocols must be adapted to employ post-quantum cryptographic schemes.

Eleni Diamanti, Romain Alléaume, Anthony Leverrier +8 more

Lukas Popperl, Nils Lohmiller, Phil Schmieder +3 more

The advent of large-scale quantum computers poses a significant threat to contemporary network security protocols, including Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)-Enterprise authentication. To mitigate this threat, the adoption of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) is critical. In this work, we investigate the performance impact of PQC algorithms on WPA-Enterprise–based authentication. To this end, we conduct an experimental evaluation of authentication latency using a testbed built with the open-source tools FreeRADIUS and hostapd, measuring the time spent at the client, access point, and RADIUS server. We evaluate multiple combinations of PQC algorithms and analyze their performance overhead in comparison to currently deployed cryptographic schemes. Beyond performance, we assess the security implications of these algorithm choices by relating authentication mechanisms to the quantum effort required for their exploitation. This perspective enables a systematic categorization of PQ-relevant weaknesses in WPA-Enterprise according to their practical urgency. The evaluation results show that, although PQC introduces additional authentication latency, combinations such as ML-DSA-65 and Falcon-1024, used in conjunction with ML-KEM, provide a favorable trade-off between security and performance. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the resulting overhead can be effectively mitigated through session resumption. Overall, this work presents a first real-world performance evaluation of PQC-enabled WPA-Enterprise authentication and demonstrates its practical feasibility for enterprise Wi-Fi deployments.

K Rameesa, Dasari Sudhakar, Mohammed Yasir +2 more