SECURE AUTHENTICATION SCHEME PREVENTING WORMHOLE ATTACKS IN COGNITIVE RADIO NETWORKS

Abstract

Cognitive Radio (CR) may introduce new classes of security threats and challenges where attacker could disrupt the basic functions of a CR network, cause harmful interference to primary users (PUs) or deny using licensed spectrum of PUs to other Secondary users (SUs) in CR network by emulating PUs. This attack is called the Primary User Emulation (PUE) attack. Additionally, the wormhole attack is possible even if the attacker has not compromised any user, and even if all communication provides authenticity and confidentiality. In the wormhole attack, an attacker records packets (or bits) at one location in the network, tunnels them to another location, and then replays them into the network from that location. A unique challenge in addressing these problems is that The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) prohibits any modification to primary users. Consequently, existing cryptographic techniques cannot be used directly. In this paper, we integrate cryptographic signatures and wireless link signatures to enable primary user detection in the presence of attackers in order to mitigate PUE attacks, and propose an efficient way to prevent wormhole attacks.