Illegal access to the network

Question

Should any impostor capture authenticator on the network and, without decrypting it, sends it as is to the captive gateway, could he / she get illegal access to the network?

Answer 1

This is not as simple as it seems. Once the impostor has sniffed the authenticator, before employing it he or she have to wait for the legitimate client to abandon the network. The IP & MAC addresses would then be altered and made correspond along with those of the client who abandoned the network and lastly send the authenticator to the gateway, while waiting for the latter to enable the connection. Actually, the impostor would wait in vain for two causes: the authenticator has a restricted duration over time and most certainly, on use by an impostor, will have already expired; the captive gateway can remember previously utilized authenticators to enable a connection and won't let access to a replica.