A Mixed-Integer Programming Approach for Jammer Placement Problems for Flow-Jamming Attacks on Wireless Communication Networks

In this dissertation, we study an important problem of security in wireless networks. We study different attacks and defense strategies in general and more specifically jamming attacks. We begin the dissertation by providing a tutorial introducing the operations research community to the various types of attacks and defense strategies in wireless networks. In this tutorial, we give examples of mathematical programming models to model jamming attacks and defense against jamming attacks in wireless networks. Later we provide a comprehensive taxonomic classification of the various types of jamming attacks and defense against jamming attacks. The classification scheme will provide a one stop location for future researchers on various jamming attack and defense strategies studied in literature. This classification scheme also highlights the areas of research in jamming attack and defense against jamming attacks which have received less attention and could be a good area of focus for future research. In the next chapter, we provide a bi-level mathematical programming model to study jamming attack and defense strategy. We solve this using a game-theoretic approach and also study the impact of power level, location of jamming device, and the number of transmission channels available to transmit data on the attack and defense against jamming attacks. We show that by increasing the number of jamming devices the throughput of the network drops by at least 7%. Finally we study a special type of jamming attack, flow-jamming attack. We provide a mathematical programming model to solve the location of jamming devices to increase the impact of flow-jamming attacks on wireless networks. We provide a Benders decomposition algorithm along with some acceleration techniques to solve large problem instances in reasonable amount of time. We draw some insights about the impact of power, location and size of the network on the impact of flow-jamming attacks in wireless networks

A Mixed-Integer Programming Approach for Jammer Placement Problems for Flow-Jamming Attacks on Wireless Communication Networks

In this dissertation, we study an important problem of security in wireless networks. We study different attacks and defense strategies in general and more specifically jamming attacks. We begin the dissertation by providing a tutorial introducing the operations research community to the various types of attacks and defense strategies in wireless networks. In this tutorial, we give examples of mathematical programming models to model jamming attacks and defense against jamming attacks in wireless networks. Later we provide a comprehensive taxonomic classification of the various types of jamming attacks and defense against jamming attacks. The classification scheme will provide a one stop location for future researchers on various jamming attack and defense strategies studied in literature. This classification scheme also highlights the areas of research in jamming attack and defense against jamming attacks which have received less attention and could be a good area of focus for future research. In the next chapter, we provide a bi-level mathematical programming model to study jamming attack and defense strategy. We solve this using a game-theoretic approach and also study the impact of power level, location of jamming device, and the number of transmission channels available to transmit data on the attack and defense against jamming attacks. We show that by increasing the number of jamming devices the throughput of the network drops by at least 7%. Finally we study a special type of jamming attack, flow-jamming attack. We provide a mathematical programming model to solve the location of jamming devices to increase the impact of flow-jamming attacks on wireless networks. We provide a Benders decomposition algorithm along with some acceleration techniques to solve large problem instances in reasonable amount of time. We draw some insights about the impact of power, location and size of the network on the impact of flow-jamming attacks in wireless networks

Selective Jamming of LoRaWAN using Commodity Hardware

Long range, low power networks are rapidly gaining acceptance in the Internet of Things (IoT) due to their ability to economically support long-range sensing and control applications while providing multi-year battery life. LoRa is a key example of this new class of network and is being deployed at large scale in several countries worldwide. As these networks move out of the lab and into the real world, they expose a large cyber-physical attack surface. Securing these networks is therefore both critical and urgent. This paper highlights security issues in LoRa and LoRaWAN that arise due to the choice of a robust but slow modulation type in the protocol. We exploit these issues to develop a suite of practical attacks based around selective jamming. These attacks are conducted and evaluated using commodity hardware. The paper concludes by suggesting a range of countermeasures that can be used to mitigate the attacks.Comment: Mobiquitous 2017, November 7-10, 2017, Melbourne, VIC, Australi