The feasibility of launching and detecting jamming attacks in wireless networks

Wireless networks are built upon a shared medium that makes it easy for adversaries to launch jamming-style attacks. These attacks can be easily accomplished by an adversary emitting radio frequency signals that do not follow an underlying MAC protocol. Jamming attacks can severely interfere with the normal operation of wireless networks and, consequently, mechanisms are needed that can cope with jamming attacks. In this paper, we examine radio interference attacks from both sides of the issue: first, we study the problem of conducting radio interference attacks on wireless networks, and second we examine the critical issue of diagnosing the presence of jamming attacks. Specifically, we propose four different jamming attack models that can be used by an adversary to disable the operation of a wireless network, and evaluate their effectiveness in terms of how each method affects the ability of a wireless node to send and receive packets. We then discuss different measurements that serv...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: MOBIHOC
• Authors: Wenyuan Xu, Wade Trappe, Yanyong Zhang, Timothy Wood
• Keywords: Jamming-style Attacks, MOBIHOC 2005, Radio Interference Attacks, Wireless Networks