Poisoned Feedback: The Impact of Malicious Users in Closed-Loop Multiuser MIMO Systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how malicious users can intentionally provide false channel feedback in multiuser MIMO systems, significantly degrading system performance and highlighting vulnerabilities in closed-loop wireless networks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel physical layer attack model involving malicious feedback in multiuser MIMO systems and analyzes its impact on spectral efficiency.

Findings

False CSI feedback causes substantial performance degradation

Malicious feedback can severely impair closed-loop transmission schemes

The attack highlights vulnerabilities in current multiuser MIMO feedback mechanisms

Abstract

Accurate channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter is critical for maximizing spectral efficiency on the downlink of multi-antenna networks. In this work we analyze a novel form of physical layer attacks on such closed-loop wireless networks. Specifically, this paper considers the impact of deliberately inaccurate feedback by malicious users in a multiuser multicast system. Numerical results demonstrate the significant degradation in performance of closed-loop transmission schemes due to intentional feedback of false CSI by adversarial users.