802.11 management frames handle joining, leaving and controlling the network: beacons, probes, authentication, association, disassociation and deauthentication, plus action frames used for features such as channel switching and radio measurements. In the original standard these frames were never protected. Anyone could forge a deauthentication frame appearing to come from the AP, and the client would obey and disconnect. This made denial-of-service attacks trivial and enabled attackers to force clients to reconnect, for example to capture a handshake or to lure them to an evil twin.
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