On the Feasibility of Overshadow Enlargement Attack on IEEE 802.15.4a Distance Bounding

Distance-bounding protocols are able to measure a secure upper bound to the distance between two devices. They are designed to resist to reduction attacks, whose objective is reducing the measured distance. In this paper we focus on the opposite problem, the enlargement attack, which is aimed at enlarging the measured distance. We analyze the feasibility of enlargement attacks through overshadow strategies on 802.15.4a UWB distance-bounding protocols. We show that the overshadow strategies, generally considered feasible by the existing literature, are actually difficult to carry out. Depending on the delay introduced by the adversary, there are cases in which they have no effect or their effect is not controllable

V-Range: Enabling Secure Ranging in 5G Wireless Networks

A number of safety- and security-critical applications such as asset tracking, smart ecosystems, autonomous vehicles and driver assistance functions, etc., are expected to benefit from the position information available through 5G. Driven by the aim to support such a wide-array of location-aware services and applications, the current release of 5G seeks to explore ranging and positioning as an integral part of 5G technology. In recent years, many attacks on positioning and ranging systems have been demonstrated, and hence it is important to build 5G systems that are resilient to distance and location manipulation attacks. No existing proposal either by 3GPP or the research community addresses the challenges of secure position estimation in 5G. In this paper, we develop V-Range, the first secure ranging system that is fully compatible with 5G standards and can be implemented directly on top of existing 5G-NR transceivers. We design V-Range, a system capable of executing secure ranging operations resilient to both distance enlargement and reduction attacks. We experimentally verify that V-Range achieves high precision, low-latency, and can operate in both the sub-6GHz and mm-wave bands intended for 5G. Our results show that an attacker cannot reduce or increase the distance by more than the imprecision of the system, without being detected with high probability

Antennas and Propagation

This Special Issue gathers topics of utmost interest in the field of antennas and propagation, such as: new directions and challenges in antenna design and propagation; innovative antenna technologies for space applications; metamaterial, metasurface and other periodic structures; antennas for 5G; electromagnetic field measurements and remote sensing applications