Title: Attacks and countermeasures in multi-hop Cognitive Radio Networks

Authors: Fei Hu, De-cun Dong, Yang Xiao

Addresses: Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA. ' Transportation Engineering Institute, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200331, PR China. ' Department of Computer Science, University of Alabama, USA

Abstract: In Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs), there are some new attacks. For instance, an attacker may modify the air interface of a CRN to mimic primary signal|s characteristics, thereby causing legitimate Secondary Users (SUs) to erroneously identify the attacker as a Primary User (PU). Most CRNs rely on Common Control Channel (CCC) to allocate channels. An attacker can saturate CCC to make control message exchange difficult. This paper analyses attacks specific to CRN and the countermeasures. We will focus on anti-attack schemes of low layers, i.e., physical and MAC layers. We propose several enhancements to secure CRN.

Keywords: wireless security; network security; CRNs; cognitive radio networks; network attacks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSN.2009.028672

International Journal of Security and Networks, 2009 Vol.4 No.4, pp.263 - 271

Published online: 22 Sep 2009 *

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