Spatial-Domain Wireless Jamming with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Mackensen, Philipp, Staat, Paul, Roth, Stefan, Sezgin, Aydin, Paar, Christof, Moonsamy, Veelasha
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866909430999678976
author Mackensen, Philipp
Staat, Paul
Roth, Stefan
Sezgin, Aydin
Paar, Christof
Moonsamy, Veelasha
author_facet Mackensen, Philipp
Staat, Paul
Roth, Stefan
Sezgin, Aydin
Paar, Christof
Moonsamy, Veelasha
contents Wireless communication infrastructure is a cornerstone of modern digital society, yet it remains vulnerable to the persistent threat of wireless jamming. Attackers can easily create radio interference to overshadow legitimate signals, leading to denial of service. The broadcast nature of radio signal propagation makes such attacks possible in the first place, but at the same time poses a challenge for the attacker: The jamming signal does not only reach the victim device but also other neighboring devices, preventing precise attack targeting. In this work, we solve this challenge by leveraging the emerging RIS technology, for the first time, for precise delivery of jamming signals. In particular, we propose a novel approach that allows for environment-adaptive spatial control of wireless jamming signals, granting a new degree of freedom to perform jamming attacks. We explore this novel method with extensive experimentation and demonstrate that our approach can disable the wireless communication of one or multiple victim devices while leaving neighboring devices unaffected. Notably, our method extends to challenging scenarios where wireless devices are very close to each other: We demonstrate complete denial-of-service of a Wi-Fi device while a second device located at a distance as close as 5 mm remains unaffected, sustaining wireless communication at a data rate of 25 Mbit/s. Lastly, we conclude by proposing potential countermeasures to thwart RIS-based spatial domain wireless jamming attacks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_13773
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Spatial-Domain Wireless Jamming with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces
Mackensen, Philipp
Staat, Paul
Roth, Stefan
Sezgin, Aydin
Paar, Christof
Moonsamy, Veelasha
Cryptography and Security
Wireless communication infrastructure is a cornerstone of modern digital society, yet it remains vulnerable to the persistent threat of wireless jamming. Attackers can easily create radio interference to overshadow legitimate signals, leading to denial of service. The broadcast nature of radio signal propagation makes such attacks possible in the first place, but at the same time poses a challenge for the attacker: The jamming signal does not only reach the victim device but also other neighboring devices, preventing precise attack targeting. In this work, we solve this challenge by leveraging the emerging RIS technology, for the first time, for precise delivery of jamming signals. In particular, we propose a novel approach that allows for environment-adaptive spatial control of wireless jamming signals, granting a new degree of freedom to perform jamming attacks. We explore this novel method with extensive experimentation and demonstrate that our approach can disable the wireless communication of one or multiple victim devices while leaving neighboring devices unaffected. Notably, our method extends to challenging scenarios where wireless devices are very close to each other: We demonstrate complete denial-of-service of a Wi-Fi device while a second device located at a distance as close as 5 mm remains unaffected, sustaining wireless communication at a data rate of 25 Mbit/s. Lastly, we conclude by proposing potential countermeasures to thwart RIS-based spatial domain wireless jamming attacks.
title Spatial-Domain Wireless Jamming with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.13773