Problem: Association and disassociation frames sent as clear text, without authentication. Simple to spoof disassociation attacks. This is considered to be less effective than a deauthentication attack as recovery from disassociation requires the client to only reassociate with an access point it is already authenticated to.

Mitigation: Authentication (cryptographic signing) of management frames (including disassociation frames) limits the authority of the source of those frames. In other words, only the specific client and the access point would be able to disassociate the client. (Note: this protection not currently part of standard implementations. Requires modification of firmware and/or use of third party software.)