Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Computer Communications

A channel perceiving attack and the countermeasure on long-range IoT physical layer key generation

Yang Lu, Yansong Gao, Junqing Zhang, Seyit Ahmet Camtepe, Dhammika Jayalath

Published Apr 29, 2022• 7 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1016/j.comcom.2022.04.027

Related papers

A review and implementation of physical layer channel key generation in the Internet of Things

Hong Qiang Zhao, Enting Guo, Zhuotao Lian +3 more

Journal of Information Security and Applications•May 13, 2024•9 citations

A Channel Perceiving Attack on Long-Range Key Generation and Its Countermeasure

Yang Lu, Yansong Gao, Junqing Zhang +2 more

The physical-layer key generation is a lightweight technique to generate secret keys from wireless channels for resource-constrained Internet of things (IoT) applications. The security of key generation relies on spatial decorrelation, which assumes that eavesdroppers observe uncorrelated channel measurements when they are located over a half-wavelength away from legitimate users. Unfortunately, there is no experimental validation for communications environments when there are large-scale and small-scale fading effects. Furthermore, while the current key generation work mainly focuses on short-range communications techniques such as WiFi and ZigBee, the exploration with long-range communications, e.g., LoRa, is rather limited. This paper presents a LoRa-based key generation testbed and reveals a new colluding-eavesdropping attack that perceives and utilizes large-scale fading effects in key generation channels, by using multiple eavesdroppers circularly around a legitimate user. We formalized the attack and validated it through extensive experiments conducted under both indoor and outdoor environments. It is corroborated that the attack reduces secret key capacity when large-scale fading is predominant. We further investigated potential defenses by proposing a conditional entropy and high-pass filter-based countermeasure to estimate and eliminate large-scale fading associated components. The experimental results demonstrated that the countermeasure can significantly improve the key generation's security when there are both varying large-scale and small-scale fading effects. The key bits generated by legitimate users have a low key disagreement rate (KDR) and validated by the NIST randomness tests. On the other hand, eavesdroppers' average KDR is increased to 0.49, which is no better than a random guess.

arXiv:1910.08770•Oct 19, 2019•0 citations

A Countermeasure Against RIS Jamming Attack in Physical-Layer Key Generation

Zheng Wan, Xiaoyan Hu, Xiaoli Sun +3 more

The attacker can manipulate a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to jamming attack to break the channel reciprocity, resulting in an increasing key disagreement rate (KDR) to interrupt the physical layer key generation (PKG). In this letter, a countermeasure for PKG is proposed to resist the RIS jamming attack. The proposed countermeasure includes the atomic norm minimization (ANM)-based multipath separation algorithm and statistic feature-based path detection algorithm, which can reconstruct the reciprocal channel without needing a wide frequency band. Simulation results show that the proposed countermeasure can significantly reduce KDR from 0.33 to 0.03 when SNR is 10 dB and achieve an excellent key generation rate (KGR) compared with existing schemes.

IEEE Wireless Communications Letters•Sep 12, 2023•4 citations

A Physical-Layer Key Distribution Mechanism for IoT Networks

Mohanad Alhasanat, Saud Althunibat, Khalid Ahmad Darabkh +2 more

Mobile Networks and Applications•Feb 13, 2019•24 citations

Efficient and Practical Physical-Layer Group Key Generation for Resource-Constrained Wireless Iot Devices

Kemedi Moara-Nkwe, Qi Shi, Mahmoud Hashem Eiza +2 more

•Jan 1, 2024•0 citations

Exploiting Malicious RIS for Secret Key Acquisition in Physical-Layer Key Generation

Lei Hu, Guyue Li, Aiqun Hu +1 more

Due to the capability of controlling wireless environments, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) can be exploited to assist radio channel-based physical-layer key generation (PKG). However, this may also pose great security threats to PKG when it is controlled by an attacker. To this end, this letter studies a RIS leakage (RISL) attack that assists the attacker to manipulate the generated keys between the legitimate ends in PKG systems. Specifically, in block fading environments, by alternatingly adapting the RIS reflection coefficients to all 0s and 1s in each block, the received signal strength (RSS) at the legitimate ends is likely to be boosted and attenuated regularly across time, causing predictable 0s and 1s in the quantized bits. To resist this attack, we propose a countermeasure based on dynamic private pilots (CDPP) and prove that the RISL success probability can be significantly reduced by CDPP. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed attack and countermeasure, highlighting the importance of introducing artificial randomness for secret key security in block fading channels.

IEEE Wireless Communications Letters•Nov 7, 2023•14 citations
The physical-layer key generation is a lightweight technique to generate secret keys from wireless channels for resource-constrained Internet of things (IoT) applications. The security of key generation relies on spatial decorrelation, which assumes that eavesdroppers observe uncorrelated channel measurements when they are located over a half-wavelength away from legitimate users. Unfortunately, there is no experimental validation for communications environments when there are large-scale and small-scale fading effects. Furthermore, while the current key generation work mainly focuses on short-range communications techniques such as WiFi and ZigBee, the exploration with long-range communications, e.g., LoRa, is rather limited. This paper presents a LoRa-based key generation testbed and reveals a new colluding-eavesdropping attack that perceives and utilizes large-scale fading effects in key generation channels, by using multiple eavesdroppers circularly around a legitimate user. We formalized the attack and validated it through extensive experiments conducted under both indoor and outdoor environments. It is corroborated that the attack reduces secret key capacity when large-scale fading is predominant. We further investigated potential defenses by proposing a conditional entropy and high-pass filter-based countermeasure to estimate and eliminate large-scale fading associated components. The experimental results demonstrated that the countermeasure can significantly improve the key generation's security when there are both varying large-scale and small-scale fading effects. The key bits generated by legitimate users have a low key disagreement rate (KDR) and validated by the NIST randomness tests. On the other hand, eavesdroppers' average KDR is increased to 0.49, which is no better than a random guess.
The attacker can manipulate a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to jamming attack to break the channel reciprocity, resulting in an increasing key disagreement rate (KDR) to interrupt the physical layer key generation (PKG). In this letter, a countermeasure for PKG is proposed to resist the RIS jamming attack. The proposed countermeasure includes the atomic norm minimization (ANM)-based multipath separation algorithm and statistic feature-based path detection algorithm, which can reconstruct the reciprocal channel without needing a wide frequency band. Simulation results show that the proposed countermeasure can significantly reduce KDR from 0.33 to 0.03 when SNR is 10 dB and achieve an excellent key generation rate (KGR) compared with existing schemes.
Due to the capability of controlling wireless environments, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) can be exploited to assist radio channel-based physical-layer key generation (PKG). However, this may also pose great security threats to PKG when it is controlled by an attacker. To this end, this letter studies a RIS leakage (RISL) attack that assists the attacker to manipulate the generated keys between the legitimate ends in PKG systems. Specifically, in block fading environments, by alternatingly adapting the RIS reflection coefficients to all 0s and 1s in each block, the received signal strength (RSS) at the legitimate ends is likely to be boosted and attenuated regularly across time, causing predictable 0s and 1s in the quantized bits. To resist this attack, we propose a countermeasure based on dynamic private pilots (CDPP) and prove that the RISL success probability can be significantly reduced by CDPP. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed attack and countermeasure, highlighting the importance of introducing artificial randomness for secret key security in block fading channels.