Potential Cognitive Radio Denial-of-Service Vulnerabilities and Protection Countermeasures: a Multi-dimensional Analysis and Assessment

Cognitive radios sense spectrum activity and apply spectrum policies in order to make decisions on when and in what bands they may communicate. These activities go beyond what is done when traditional radios communicate. This paper examines the denial of service vulnerabilities that are opened by these additional activities and explores potential protection remedies that can be applied. An analysis of how vulnerable are victim cognitive radios to potential denial of service attacks is presented along different axis, namely the network architecture employed, the spectrum access technique used and the spectrum awareness model. The goal is to assist cognitive radio designers to incorporate effective security measures now in the early stages of cognitive radio development.

Amita SethiEmail:

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Timothy X Brown   received his B.S. in physics from Pennsylvania State University and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology in 1990 when he joined the Jet Propulsion Lab. In 1992 he joined Bell Communications Research. Since 1995 he has had a joint appointment with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is currently an Associate Professor. His research interests include adaptive network control, wireless communications systems, and spectrum policy. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award. In 2003 he was chosen the Global Wireless Education Consortium’s (GWEC) wireless educator of the year. Amita Sethi   received her B. Tech degree from Mysore University, India in 1999. From January 2000 to September 2005, she has worked in the telecommunications software industry with Aricent Technologies (formerly, Flextronics Software Systems). Since January 2006, she is a Masters student at the University of Colorado, Boulder and is a research assistant in Professor Timothy Brown’s wireless networking lab. Her research interests include security in cognitive radio networks and wireless ad-hoc networks.