Mitigating Rate Attacks through Crypto-Coded Modulation

Exposing the rate information of wireless transmissions enables highly efficient attacks that can severely degrade the performance of a network at very low cost. In this paper, we introduce an integrated solution to conceal the rate information of wireless transmissions while simultaneously boosting the resiliency against interference. The proposed solution is based on a generalization of Trellis Coded Modulation combined with Cryptographic Interleaving. We develop algorithms for discovering explicit codes for concealing any modulation in {BPSK, QPSK, 8-PSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM}. We propose a 2-pass frequency correction and phase tracking mechanisms that enables the proposed schemes to reach their potential. We demonstrate that in most cases this rate hiding scheme has the side effect of boosting resiliency by up to 7dB (simulations) and 4dB (SDR experiments).

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