WIRELESS NETWORK PENETRATION TESTING

Your wireless network is the one part of your perimeter that literally leaves the building. A firewall stops an attacker at the edge of your wired network, but radio does not stop at the wall. It spills into the car park, the lobby, the floor above, and the street outside. An attacker sitting in a parked car is, for the purposes of your wireless network, already on site. They do not need to get past reception, tailgate through a door, or plug into a switch; they only need to be in range. A wireless penetration test assesses exactly that exposure: what someone within radio range can see, capture, and reach, and whether the encryption, authentication, and segmentation between your networks actually hold up under a determined attack rather than just looking correct in the controller's configuration screen.

We assess wireless across three areas.

What we test

Our methodology covers three areas, and a full engagement works through all of them against the SSIDs and sites in scope.

  • Infrastructure: the wireless implementation itself. We look at the encryption in use (modern WPA2/WPA3 versus legacy protocols that should have been retired long ago), the authentication design (a shared PSK versus enterprise authentication backed by RADIUS and EAP), and the network segmentation between guest, corporate, and production SSIDs, because a guest network that can reach internal systems is a flat network wearing a disguise. This is also where we hunt for rogue or unauthorised access points: devices broadcasting your network name, or unsanctioned APs plugged in by staff, that quietly extend your attack surface beyond anything IT approved.
  • Protocol: weaknesses in the wireless protocols and how they are configured. On a network using a pre-shared key, we capture the authentication handshake and attempt to crack a weak PSK offline, where an attacker has unlimited time and computing power and your users never notice. We test for downgrade attacks that push clients onto weaker protocols, and we examine enterprise authentication for misconfiguration: clients that fail to validate the RADIUS server's certificate, for example, will hand their credentials to any server that asks.
  • Client-side attack: the devices that connect, not the network they connect to. A laptop or phone that has ever joined your Wi-Fi remembers the network and will look for it again. We test whether an evil twin or rogue AP, an attacker-controlled access point impersonating your legitimate SSID, can lure those clients into connecting and harvest credentials in the process. We use deauthentication to see how clients behave when knocked off the real network, and we measure how easily a user can be steered onto a network the attacker controls. Client-side attacks matter because they route around the infrastructure entirely: even a well-configured network cannot help you if the endpoint willingly connects to an impostor.

Scope is agreed with you up front: the number of SSIDs, the number of sites, and whether we cover guest, corporate, and production networks. From there the depth of testing adapts to your environment rather than being forced through a fixed checklist.

How we work

Every engagement runs through the same phases, so you always know where the project stands and what arrives next.

  1. Scope SSIDs & sites: We agree which networks and which physical locations are in scope, which SSIDs are guest versus corporate versus production, and what "in range" means for your buildings. Untested surface is agreed here, not discovered at the end.
  2. Survey & recon: On site, we map the radio environment: which access points and SSIDs are actually broadcasting, their encryption and authentication settings, signal reach beyond your walls, and anything present that should not be. That is the first place a rogue AP shows up.
  3. Infrastructure & protocol testing: We assess the encryption and authentication design, capture handshakes to test PSK strength offline, probe segmentation between networks, and examine enterprise/RADIUS/EAP configuration for the misconfigurations that let an attacker bypass it.
  4. Client-side testing: We stand up controlled evil-twin and rogue-AP scenarios and use deauthentication to test whether client devices can be lured onto an attacker-controlled network and made to disclose credentials, always within the rules of engagement agreed during scoping.
  5. Reporting: Findings are written up with impact, rated by Risk Level, and given a clear reproduction path so your team can see exactly what we did.
  6. Retest: After your team remediates, we retest to confirm each issue is genuinely closed and update the report to reflect it.

What you get

Every report contains, at minimum:

  • Executive summary: a business-level risk picture, suitable for management and auditors.
  • Findings by Risk Level: each issue rated Critical, High, Medium, or Low so remediation can be prioritised objectively.
  • Reproduction / POC for every finding: the exact steps, captures, and conditions that reproduce the issue; your engineers should never have to guess how we did it.
  • Remediation guidance: practical fixes tied to your environment, not scanner boilerplate.
  • Retest verification: findings are re-checked after your fixes and the report is updated to reflect closed items.

Team credentials

Testing is performed by our in-house team holding industry certifications including OSCP, OSCE, CREST CRT, CREST CPSA, and GIAC GREM, each earned through hands-on practical examination. See the full list of certifications the team holds.

Standards

If your organisation handles payment-card data, wireless testing is not optional. PCI DSS Requirement 11 calls for detecting both authorised and unauthorised (rogue) wireless access points on a quarterly basis, precisely because a single rogue AP can undo an otherwise segmented cardholder-data environment. This test covers that requirement directly and feeds into your wider PCI DSS penetration test scope.

Wireless testing also complements our infrastructure penetration test: the wireless assessment covers the perimeter that travels through the air, while the infrastructure test covers the wired network and internal systems an attacker reaches once they are through it. Tested together, they close the gap between what an attacker can touch from the car park and what they can reach once inside.

Last reviewed: 21 Sep 2026

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Frequently asked questions

Why does wireless need its own penetration test?

A wired perimeter ends at your walls, and radio does not. Anyone within signal range, in the car park or on the street outside, already has the reach that would otherwise mean getting past reception or plugging into a switch. A wireless test measures that reach: what is visible, capturable, and connectable from outside the building.

What does a wireless penetration test cover?

Three areas: infrastructure (encryption in use, WPA2/WPA3 versus legacy, PSK versus enterprise RADIUS/EAP, segmentation between guest/corporate/production SSIDs, and rogue access points), protocol (capturing the handshake to crack a weak PSK offline, downgrade attacks, and RADIUS certificate-validation misconfigurations), and client-side attacks (evil-twin and rogue-AP scenarios that lure devices into connecting).

What is an evil twin or rogue access point attack?

An evil twin is a fake access point broadcasting your legitimate SSID to catch devices that reconnect automatically. A rogue access point is broader: any unauthorised AP on your network, whether it is an attacker's or one a staff member plugged in without telling IT. Either way, a device that has ever joined your Wi-Fi keeps looking for that network, which is what lets the impersonation succeed without the user noticing.

Does this satisfy PCI DSS wireless requirements?

Yes, for the rogue access point detection Requirement 11 asks for, provided it runs every quarter rather than once a year. Two things decide whether an assessor accepts it: the sweep has to cover every site in the cardholder-data environment, including the ones nobody thinks of as in scope, and the evidence has to name what was found and when. A single site missed is the gap a rogue AP sits in. Scope it alongside your PCI DSS penetration test and both sets of evidence arrive together.

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