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arXiv:2309.00342 · IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference

Self-Sustainable Key Generation: Strategies and Performance Bounds under DoS Attacks

Rusni Kima Mangang, J. Harshan

Published Oct 10, 2023• 0 citations
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Abstract

Denial-of-Service (DoS) threats pose a major challenge to the idea of physical-layer key generation as the underlying wireless channels for key extraction are usually public. Identifying this vulnerability, we study the effect of DoS threats on relay-assisted key generation, and show that a reactive jamming attack on the distribution phase of relay-assisted key generation can forbid the nodes from extracting secret keys. To circumvent this problem, we propose a self-sustainable key generation model, wherein a frequency-hopping based distribution phase is employed to evade the jamming attack even though the participating nodes do not share prior credentials. A salient feature of the idea is to carve out a few bits from the key generation phase and subsequently use them to pick a frequency band at random for the broadcast phase. Interesting resource-allocation problems are formulated on how to extract maximum number of secret bits while also being able to evade the jamming attack with high probability. Tractable low-complexity solutions are also provided to the resource-allocation problems, along with insights on the feasibility of their implementation in practice.

DOI
10.1109/vtc2023-fall60731.2023.10333530

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•Jul 31, 2017•0 citations
Denial-of-Service (DoS) threats pose a major challenge to the idea of physical-layer key generation as the underlying wireless channels for key extraction are usually public. Identifying this vulnerability, we study the effect of DoS threats on relay-assisted key generation, and show that a reactive jamming attack on the distribution phase of relay-assisted key generation can forbid the nodes from extracting secret keys. To circumvent this problem, we propose a self-sustainable key generation model, wherein a frequency-hopping based distribution phase is employed to evade the jamming attack even though the participating nodes do not share prior credentials. A salient feature of the idea is to carve out a few bits from the key generation phase and subsequently use them to pick a frequency band at random for the broadcast phase. Interesting resource-allocation problems are formulated on how to extract maximum number of secret bits while also being able to evade the jamming attack with high probability. Tractable low-complexity solutions are also provided to the resource-allocation problems, along with insights on the feasibility of their implementation in practice.
The topic of physical layer key agreement in Gaussian block fading channels in the presence of active adversaries is investigated in the present contribution. Frequency hopping versus frequency spreading are studied as potential defence strategies against denial of service (DoS) attacks in the form of jamming. We begin by investigating the optimal power allocation policy for the jammer - in the case of frequency spreading - when side information is available. Through numerical evaluations it is shown that effect of the availability of side information on the jammer's impact is minimal. Next, the competitive interaction between the legitimate nodes and the jammer is formulated as a one-shot zero-sum game; it is found that under short term power constraints, the legitimate nodes should not always employ frequency hopping while the jammer should always use frequency spreading. This result contradicts the common practice of using frequency hopping to defend against jamming attacks in standard wireless systems.
Wireless secret key generation (W-SKG) from shared randomness (e.g., from the wireless channel fading realizations), is a well established scheme that can be used for session key agreement. W-SKG approaches can be of particular interest in delay constrained wireless networks and notably in the context of ultra reliable low latency communications (URLLC) in beyond fifth generation (B5G) systems. However W- SKG schemes are known to be malleable over the so called "advantage distillation" phase, during which observations of the shared randomness are obtained at the legitimate parties. As an example, an active attacker can act as a man-in- the-middle (MiM) by injecting pilot signals and/or can mount denial of service attacks (DoS) in the form of jamming. This paper investigates the impact of injection and reactive jamming attacks in W-SKG. First, it is demonstrated that injection attacks can be reduced to - potentially less harmful - jamming attacks by pilot randomization; a novel system design with randomized QPSK pilots is presented. Subsequently, the optimal jamming strategy is identified in a block fading additive white Gaussian noise (BF-AWGN) channel in the presence of a reactive jammer, using a game theoretic formulation. It is shown that the impact of a reactive jammer is far more severe than that of a simple proactive jammer.
Information is regarded as a resource with highest organizational value. Its confidentiality, integrity and authenticity are important for any organization. The broadcast nature of wireless medium makes communication vulnerable to security attacks such as eavesdropping, non-repudiation, denial of service and more. Hence, prior to transmission of information, a secret key is securely exchanged between sender and receiver. Conventional key generation algorithms work at the application layer. However, they suffer from computational overheads and require a reliable third party. Moreover, when system grows complex, these methods start failing considerably. To encounter these issues, a novel key exchange mechanism is proposed which works at the physical layer. The proposed method is based on the concept of self-jamming and exploits the properties of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). The simulation results show that the proposed scheme has a low Bit Error Rate (BER) for the receiver and high BER for the eavesdropper. It has also been shown that the number of attempts that eavesdropper has to make to guess the correct key are large, thereby decreasing its probability to decode the correct key.
Secret key generation (SKG) from shared randomness at two remote locations has been shown to be vulnerable to denial of service attacks in the form of jamming. Typically, such attacks are alleviated with frequency hopping/spreading techniques that rely on expansion of the system bandwidth. In the present study, energy harvesting (EH) is exploited as a novel counter-jamming approach that alleviates the need for extra bandwidth resources. Assuming the legitimate users have EH capabilities, the idea is that part of the jamming signal can potentially be harvested and converted into useful communication power. In this framework, the competitive interaction between a pair of legitimate users and a jammer is formulated as a zero-sum game. A critical transmission power for the legitimate users is identified which allows to completely characterize the unique NE of the game in closed form. Remarkably, this threshold also provides the option to effectively neutralize the jammer, i.e., prevent the jammer from carrying out the attack altogether. Through numerical evaluations, EH is shown to be a counter-jamming approach that can offer substantial gains in terms of relative SKG rates.
The impact of relay nodes on the secret key generation via the physical layer resources is investigated. A novel relay-assisted strategy is proposed to improve the generated secret key rate. The main idea is to exploit the random channels associated with relay nodes in the network as additional random sources for the key generation. This approach is particularly useful when the channels between legitimate nodes change slowly. Four increasingly sophisticated yet more practical scenarios are studied, for which relay-assisted key generation protocols are proposed and are shown to be optimal or order-optimal in terms of the key rate. It is also shown that the multiplexing gain in the key rate scales linearly with the number of relays, which demonstrates that relay-assisted schemes substantially increase the key rate. This is in sharp contrast to scenarios with relays helping information transmission, in which the multiplexing gain does not scale with the number of relays. Furthermore, a cooperative scheme is also proposed in which relays help key generation but the generated keys are kept secure from these relays.
Secret key generation (SKG) schemes have been shown to be vulnerable to denial of service (DoS) attacks in the form of jamming. In this paper, a comprehensive study on the impact of correlated and uncorrelated jamming in wireless SKG systems is presented. First, optimal signalling schemes for the legitimate users and jamming approaches for an active adversary launching a DoS attack on the SKG system are derived. It is shown that the legitimate users should employ constant signalling. On the other hand, the jammer should inject either correlated jamming when imperfect channel state information (CSI) regarding the main channel is at their disposal, or, uncorrelated jamming when the main channel CSI is completely unknown. In both cases, optimal power allocation policies are studied under short-term power constrains for M block fading additive white Gaussian noise (BF-AWGN) channels. Numerical evaluations demonstrate that equidistribution of the jamming power is near-optimal in the case of uncorrelated jamming.