# Authenticated Preambles for Denial of Service Mitigation in LPWANs

## TL;DR

This paper proposes authentication preambles to mitigate DoS attacks in LPWANs, especially LoRaWAN, showing significant energy savings during attacks with minimal overhead during normal operation.

## Contribution

Introduction of authentication preambles as an effective method to reduce battery exhaustion attacks in LPWANs, specifically tailored for LoRaWAN networks.

## Key findings

- 91% energy saving during DoS attacks
- 4% energy overhead in normal operation
- Effective mitigation of battery exhaustion attacks

## Abstract

In this article we introduce authentication preambles as a mechanism to mitigate battery exhaustion attacks in LPWAN networks. We focus on the LoRaWAN technology as an exponent of industrial LPWANs. We analyze the impact of DoS attacks in Class B deployments and implement authentication preambles to limit attacker options when forcing nodes to overhear class B beacons. The article presents realistic results demonstrating significant energy savings (91% energy saving when a network is attacked) versus a 4% energy overhead of the mechanism in normally operating networks.