Assuring robustness of radio spectrum telemetry against vandalism and exploitation

Security;Distributed Spectrum Sensing;White Space Networks;Radio Spectrum Telemetry;Coordinated Malicious False Reports;Exploitation;Vandalism

Fatemieh, Seyed Omid

关键词: Security;    Distributed Spectrum Sensing;    White Space Networks;    Radio Spectrum Telemetry;    Coordinated Malicious False Reports;    Exploitation;    Vandalism;   

Others  :  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/24212/Fatemieh_SeyedOmid.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

美国|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

The emerging paradigm for using the wireless spectrum more efficiently is based on enablingsecondary users to exploit white-space frequencies that are not occupied by primary users. Anenabling technology for forming networks over white spaces is distributed spectrum measurementto identify and assess the quality of unused channels. This spectrum availability data is oftenaggregated at a central base station or database to govern the usage of spectrum. This process,also referred to as radio spectrum telemetry, is vulnerable to integrity violations if the devicesare malicious and misreport spectrum sensing results. There may be nodes that seek to exploit aspectrum in a given region by falsely reporting that a primary signal is present, or, dually, seekto vandalize a primary by reporting that its signal is not present, thereby encouraging interferencefrom secondaries.This dissertation focuses on assuring robustness of radio spectrum telemetry against exploitationand vandalism attacks. This problem is particularly challenging when: (1) attackers are omniscientand coordinated, and constitute a large fraction of the nodes in an area, and (2) the quantity undermeasurement (signal power) faces natural spatial and temporal variations, as well as uncertaintiesdue to noise, shadowing, and fading. These circumstances make it easier for sophisticated attackersto hide the likely abnormalities of their reports. As illustrative examples, this work investigatestwo new applications for white-space networks; the communications of the advanced meter infrastructure(AMI) and broadband Internet access for public school students. These applications areutilized to underline the importance of the considered security attacks in practical settings. In addition,the thesis offers communication architectures for these applications and shows the practical,economical, and societal benefits.This work formulates the problem of robust radio spectrum telemetry using a grid-based modeland offers a range of solutions. The solutions include (1) model-based techniques that probabilisticallydetect abnormalities using knowledge about signal propagation and shadowing formulas,(2) data-based techniques based on machine learning classifiers that do not assume prior knowledgeabout signal propagation models and only rely on direct training data, and (3) trust-basedtechniques that use a small subset of remotely-attestable nodes as a foundation for trust, and subsequentlydeter attacks using a combination of statistical sequential estimation and classificationtechniques. The proposed techniques are evaluated using a novel methodology that relies in parton predicted propagation data derived from real-world registered TV transmitter and terrain data(from the databases of the FCC and NASA) for areas in Illinois and Pennsylvania.