a wi-fi deauthenticatoon attack is a kind of denial of service attack that can be used in certain wireless networks. in a wi-fi network, devices such as computers communicate with a wireless access point. to get an ip address, each devices needs to be authenticated, so the access point knows the device. in this context, there also is a frame (or a command) that tells a device that it is no longer authenticated. as the protocol does not require these frames to be encrypted, an attacker can simply send such a command to deconnect a device. the attacker only needs to know the mac address of the victim. this address is sent unencrypted with each frame.