Defenses for Attacks of Radio Interference in Wireless Networks (DARWIN)

Abstract

The objective of this research is to defend wireless sensor networks from radio interference attacks.

Wireless sensor networks are built upon a shared medium that makes it easy for adversaries to conduct radio interference, or jamming, attacks that effectively cause a denial of service (DoS) of either transmission or reception functionalities. These attacks can be easily accomplished by an adversary by either bypassing MAC-layer protocols, or emitting a radio signal targeted at jamming a particular channel. In this project, we study both the attack and defense side of the problem. On the attack side, we design four different jamming attack models, and evaluate their effectiveness. On the defense side, we advocate a two-phase strategy involving the detection of the attack, followed by a response strategy. To reliably detect jamming, we find that not a single measurement is enough, and therefore, we have to adopt multimodal detection methods. To cope with jamming, we propose a technique, channel surfing, which involves evading the interferer in the spectral domain. The main challenge of channel surfing lies in how to maintain network connectivity while network nodes work on multiple channels. Beyond channel surfing, we can also establish a low data rate jamming-resistant communication channel by modulating the packet interarrival times.

In this project, we built a testbed of MICA2 motes (conducted extensive tests with 30 motes), and implemented the four jammer models, multimodal detection algorithms, and channel surfing strategies on the testbed.

Publications