HidePrint: Protecting Device Anonymity by Obscuring Radio Fingerprints

TL;DR

This paper introduces HidePrint, a method that obscures radio device fingerprints by injecting controlled noise, effectively preventing device identification via radio frequency fingerprinting without significantly degrading communication quality.

Contribution

We propose HidePrint, a novel noise-injection technique that protects device anonymity against RFF-based identification while maintaining communication integrity.

Findings

Gaussian noise injection with std deviation ≥ 0.02 prevents fingerprinting

Minimal impact on SNR (0.1 dB) during fingerprint protection

Effective against various RFF techniques and adversarial models

Abstract

Radio Frequency Fingerprinting (RFF) techniques allow a receiver to authenticate a transmitter by analyzing the physical layer of the radio spectrum. Although the vast majority of scientific contributions focus on improving the performance of RFF considering different parameters and scenarios, in this work, we consider RFF as an attack vector to identify a target device in the radio spectrum. \\ We propose, implement, and evaluate {\em HidePrint}, a solution to prevent identification through RFF without affecting the quality of the communication link between the transmitter and the receiver. {\em HidePrint} hides the transmitter's fingerprint against an illegitimate eavesdropper through the injection of controlled noise into the transmitted signal. We evaluate our solution against various state-of-the-art RFF techniques, considering several adversarial models, data from real-world communication links (wired and wireless), and protocol configurations. Our results show that the injection of a Gaussian noise pattern with a normalized standard deviation of (at least) 0.02 prevents device fingerprinting in all the considered scenarios, while affecting the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of the received signal by only 0.1 dB. Moreover, we introduce {\em selective radio fingerprint disclosure}, a new technique that allows the transmitter to disclose the radio fingerprint to only a subset of intended receivers.