RIS-Jamming: Breaking Key Consistency in Channel Reciprocity-based Key Generation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Li, Guyue, Staat, Paul, Li, Haoyu, Heinrichs, Markus, Zenger, Christian, Kronberger, Rainer, Elders-Boll, Harald, Paar, Christof, Hu, Aiqun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Li, Guyue
Staat, Paul
Li, Haoyu
Heinrichs, Markus
Zenger, Christian
Kronberger, Rainer
Elders-Boll, Harald
Paar, Christof
Hu, Aiqun
author_facet Li, Guyue
Staat, Paul
Li, Haoyu
Heinrichs, Markus
Zenger, Christian
Kronberger, Rainer
Elders-Boll, Harald
Paar, Christof
Hu, Aiqun
contents Channel Reciprocity-based Key Generation (CRKG) exploits reciprocal channel randomness to establish shared secret keys between wireless terminals. This new security technique is expected to complement existing cryptographic techniques for secret key distribution of future wireless networks. In this paper, we present a new attack, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) jamming, and show that an attacker can prevent legitimate users from agreeing on the same key by deploying a malicious RIS to break channel reciprocity. Specifically, we elaborate on three examples to implement the RIS jamming attack: Using active nonreciprocal circuits, performing time-varying controls, and reducing the signal-to-noise ratio. The attack effect is then studied by formulating the secret key rate with a relationship to the deployment of RIS. To resist such RIS jamming attacks, we propose a countermeasure that exploits wideband signals for multipath separation. The malicious RIS path is distinguished from all separated channel paths, and thus the countermeasure is referred to as contaminated path removal-based CRKG(CRP-CRKG). We present simulation results, showing that legitimate users under RIS jamming are still able to generate secret keys from the remaining paths. We also experimentally demonstrate the RIS jamming attack by using commodity Wi-Fi devices in conjunction with a fabricated RIS prototype. In our experiments, we were able to increase the average bit disagreement ratio (BDR) of raw secret keys by 20%. Further, we successfully demonstrate the proposed CRP-CRKG countermeasure to tackle RIS jamming in wideband systems as long as the source of randomness and the RIS propagation paths are separable.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2303_07015
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle RIS-Jamming: Breaking Key Consistency in Channel Reciprocity-based Key Generation
Li, Guyue
Staat, Paul
Li, Haoyu
Heinrichs, Markus
Zenger, Christian
Kronberger, Rainer
Elders-Boll, Harald
Paar, Christof
Hu, Aiqun
Information Theory
Channel Reciprocity-based Key Generation (CRKG) exploits reciprocal channel randomness to establish shared secret keys between wireless terminals. This new security technique is expected to complement existing cryptographic techniques for secret key distribution of future wireless networks. In this paper, we present a new attack, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) jamming, and show that an attacker can prevent legitimate users from agreeing on the same key by deploying a malicious RIS to break channel reciprocity. Specifically, we elaborate on three examples to implement the RIS jamming attack: Using active nonreciprocal circuits, performing time-varying controls, and reducing the signal-to-noise ratio. The attack effect is then studied by formulating the secret key rate with a relationship to the deployment of RIS. To resist such RIS jamming attacks, we propose a countermeasure that exploits wideband signals for multipath separation. The malicious RIS path is distinguished from all separated channel paths, and thus the countermeasure is referred to as contaminated path removal-based CRKG(CRP-CRKG). We present simulation results, showing that legitimate users under RIS jamming are still able to generate secret keys from the remaining paths. We also experimentally demonstrate the RIS jamming attack by using commodity Wi-Fi devices in conjunction with a fabricated RIS prototype. In our experiments, we were able to increase the average bit disagreement ratio (BDR) of raw secret keys by 20%. Further, we successfully demonstrate the proposed CRP-CRKG countermeasure to tackle RIS jamming in wideband systems as long as the source of randomness and the RIS propagation paths are separable.
title RIS-Jamming: Breaking Key Consistency in Channel Reciprocity-based Key Generation
topic Information Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.07015