From Conceptual Scaffold to Prototype: A Standardized Zonal Architecture for Wi-Fi Security Training

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 8 May 2026] From Conceptual Scaffold to Prototype: A Standardized Zonal Architecture for Wi-Fi Security Training Vyron Kampourakis, Efstratios Chatzoglou, Vasileios Gkioulos, Sokratis Katsikas Wi-Fi is the dominant wireless access technology, but its widespread use also exposes systems to threats such as rogue access points, deauthentication attacks, and other IEEE 802.11-specific vulnerabilities. Although Cyber Ranges (CRs) have become valuable platforms for cybersecurity training and experimentation, existing wireless-oriented solutions mainly target heterogeneous IoT or mobile-network settings, with Wi-Fi typically treated as one among many. As a result, dedicated CR environments for Wi-Fi-specific security experimentation remain limited. This gap is particularly relevant because wireless attacks often require protocol-aware experimentation that is difficult to reproduce in conventional training environments. This paper introduces a conceptual architecture for a Wi-Fi-focused CR tailored to IEEE 802.11 security scenarios and an open-source prototype. The proposed design is grounded in established CR design principles and organized around core infrastructure, learning management and support, monitoring, management, and access-control zones. Structuring the platform into these distinct zones, the architecture supports modularity, scalability, and future extensibility. Part of the design is realized in a prototype publicly available in a GitHub repository that implements the scenario generation, storage, retrieval, and instantiation workflow, offering an initial practical foundation for the proposed architecture. Overall, the paper provides a structured foundation for the future implementation of Wi-Fi-specialized CR platforms for targeted experimentation. Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2605.07400 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2605.07400v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.07400 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Vyron Kampourakis [view email] [v1] Fri, 8 May 2026 07:55:48 UTC (1,418 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-05 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)