Stealth Spectrum Sensing Data Falsification Attacks Affecting IoT Spectrum Monitors on the Battlefield

Resource-constrained spectrum sensors from the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) monitor the frequency spectrum to communicate over unoccupied bands, intercept enemy transmissions, or decode valuable information. However, they are also susceptible to Spectrum Sensing Data Falsification (SSDF) attacks manipulating the sensing data and impacting the previous services. Detection systems based on fingerprinting and machine learning have shown promising performance while detecting existing SSDF attacks. However, novel attacks reducing their impact on sensors behaviors have not been analyzed yet. Thus, this work redesigns and reimplements seven SSDF attacks by modifying spectrum data in the sensor memory instead of at later stages in the file system. Several experiments with current intelligent detection systems demonstrated that more effort is needed from the defensive perspective since the new SSDF attacks evade their detection. In this sense, literature-based detection methods achieve less than a 0.50 True Positive Rate when detecting the new implementations of the attacks.

I. Introduction

The Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) [1] integrates the Internet of Things (IoT) with the necessities of military scenarios where features such as security, privacy, and availability are critical. The nature of the IoBT, characterized by the constant movement of troops, vehicles, and military hardware, necessitates wireless communications [2]. Consequently, radio frequency (RF) spectrum must be securely and aptly managed to choose unoccupied frequency bands, establish secure transmissions, intercept enemy messages, and decode valuable data. In the IoBT, one of the most common strategies to enforce the aforementioned tasks involves deploying resource-constrained spectrum sensors that can monitor and decode transmissions across various radio bands [3]. These sensors offer several benefits, including portability, accuracy, simplicity, and cost-efficiency. However, they are also susceptible to cyberattacks.