Radio Propagation Characteristics-based Spoofing Attack Prevention on Wireless Connected Devices

A spoofing attack is a critical issue in wireless communication in which a malicious transmitter outside a system attempts to be genuine. As a countermeasure against this, we propose a device-authentication method based on position identification using radio-propagation characteristics (RPCs). Not depending on information processing such as encryption technology, this method can be applied to sensing devices etc. which commonly have many resource restrictions. We call the space from which attacks achieve success as the “attack space.” In order to confine the attack space inside of the target system to prevent spoofing attacks from the outside, formulation of the relationship between combinations of transceivers and the attack space is necessary. In this research, we consider two RPCs, the received signal strength ratio (RSSR) and the time difference of arrival (TDoA), and construct the attack-space model which uses these RPCs simultaneously. We take a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) as a case study of this method and execute a security evaluation based on radio-wave-propagation simulation. The simulation results assuming multiple noise environments all indicate that it is possible to eliminate the attack possibility from a distant location.