Probabilistic Jamming/Eavesdropping Attacks to Confuse a Buffer-Aided Transmitter-Receiver Pair

TL;DR

This paper explores how a passive, energy-harvesting attacker can probabilistically jam or eavesdrop on a buffer-aided communication system, revealing vulnerabilities and proposing attack strategies that degrade security.

Contribution

It introduces a probabilistic attack model with an energy-harvesting attacker and analyzes its impact on the security and throughput of buffer-aided systems.

Findings

Energy-harvesting attacker can degrade security without external power

Random data and channel behavior can enhance system security

Designed attack scheme minimizes legitimate system throughput

Abstract

We assume that a buffer-aided transmitter communicates with a receiving node in the presence of an attacker. We investigate the impact of a radio-frequency energy-harvesting attacker that probabilistically operates as a jammer or an eavesdropper. We show that even without the need for an external energy source, the attacker can still degrade the security of the legitimate system. We show that the random data arrival behavior at the transmitter and the channel randomness of the legitimate link can improve the system's security. Moreover, we design a jamming scheme for the attacker and investigate its impact on the secure throughput of the legitimate system. The attacker designs his power splitting parameter and jamming/eavesdropping probability based on the energy state of the attacker's battery to minimize the secure throughput of the legitimate system.

Full text

See pages 1-last of arxiv.pdf