• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2014

Cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) is considered as a powerful approach to improve the utilization of scarce radio spectrum resources. However, most of CSS schemes assume all secondary users (SU) are honest, and thus offering opportunities for malicious SUs to launch the spectrum sensing data falsification attack (SSDF attack). To combat such misbehaved behaviors, recent efforts have been made to trust schemes. In this paper, we argue that powering CSS with traditional trust schemes is not enough. The rational SSDF attack is found in this paper. Unlike the simple SSDF attack, rational SSDF attackers send out false sensing data on a small number of interested primary users (PUs) rather than all PUs. In this case, rational SSDF attackers can keep up high trustworthiness, resulting in difficultly detecting malicious SUs in the traditional trust schemes. Meanwhile, a defense scheme using a novel trust approach is proposed to counter rational SSDF attack. Simulation results show that this scheme can successfully reduce the power of rational SSDF, and thus ensure the performance of CSS.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.41 no.8
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• pp.877-889
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• 2016

In this paper, we introduce the basic components of the Cognitive Radio Networks along with possible threats. Specifically, we investigate the SSDF (Spectrum Sensing Data Falsification) attack which is one of the easiest attack to carry out. Despite its simplicity, the SSDF attack needs careful attention in order to build a secure system that resists to it. The proposed scheme utilizes the Anomaly Detection technique to identify malicious users as well as their sensing reports. The simulation results shows that the proposed scheme can effectively detect erroneous sensing reports and thus result in correct detection of the active primary users.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.2067-2080
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• 2016

Cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) for vacant licensed bands is one of the key techniques in cognitive radio networks. Currently, sequential probability ratio test scheme (SPRT) is considered as a powerful soft decision approach to improve the sensing result for CSS. However, SPRT assumes all secondary users (SU) are honest, and thus offering opportunities for malicious SUs to launch the spectrum sensing data falsification attack (SSDF attack). To combat such misbehaved behaviors, recent efforts have been made to trust mechanism. In this paper, we argue that powering SPRT with traditional trust mechanism is not enough. Dynamic SSDF attackers can maintain high trust in an alternant process of submitting honest or false sensing data, resulting in difficultly detecting them. Noting that the trust value of dymamic SSDF attackers behave highly volatile, a novel trusted SPRT scheme (VSPRT) based on volatility decay analysis is proposed in this paper to mitigate the harmful effect of dynamic SSDF attackers in the process of the soft-decision data fusion, and thus improving the accuracy of the final sensing result. Simulation results show that the VSPRT scheme outperforms the conventional SPRT schemes.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.122-133
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• 2009

As wireless spectrum resources become more scarce while some portions of frequency bands suffer from low utilization, the design of cognitive radio (CR) has recently been urged, which allows opportunistic usage of licensed bands for secondary users without interference with primary users. Spectrum sensing is fundamental for a secondary user to find a specific available spectrum hole. Cooperative spectrum sensing is more accurate and more widely used since it obtains helpful reports from nodes in different locations. However, if some nodes are compromised and report false sensing data to the fusion center on purpose, the accuracy of decisions made by the fusion center can be heavily impaired. Weighted sequential probability ratio test (WSPRT), based on a credit evaluation system to restrict damage caused by malicious nodes, was proposed to address such a spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attack at the price of introducing four times more sampling numbers. In this paper, we propose two new schemes, named enhanced weighted sequential probability ratio test (EWSPRT) and enhanced weighted sequential zero/one test (EWSZOT), which are robust against SSDF attack. By incorporating a new weight module and a new test module, both schemes have much less sampling numbers than WSPRT. Simulation results show that when holding comparable error rates, the numbers of EWSPRT and EWSZOT are 40% and 75% lower than WSPRT, respectively. We also provide theoretical analysis models to support the performance improvement estimates of the new schemes.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.74-80
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• 2015

In cognitive radios, spectrum sensing plays an important role in accurately detecting the presence or absence of a licensed user. However, the intervention of malicious users (MUs) degrades the performance of spectrum sensing. Such users manipulate the local results and send falsified data to the data fusion center; this process is called spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF). Thus, MUs degrade the spectrum sensing performance and increase uncertainty issues. In this paper, we propose a method based on the Hausdorff distance and a similarity measure matrix to measure the difference between the normal user evidence and the malicious user evidence. In addition, we use the Dempster-Shafer theory to combine the sets of evidence from each normal user evidence. We compare the proposed method with the k-means and Jaccard distance methods for malicious user detection. Simulation results show that the proposed method is effective against an SSDF attack.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.1042-1062
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• 2010

Cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) is an effective technology for alleviating the unreliability of local spectrum sensing due to fading/shadowing effects. Unlike most existing solutions, this paper considers the use of CSS technology in decentralized networks where a fusion center is not available. In such a decentralized network, some attackers may sneak into the ranks of cooperative users. On the basis of recent advances in bio-inspired consensus algorithms, an attack-proof, decentralized CSS scheme is proposed in which all secondary users can maintain cooperative sensing by exchanging information locally instead of requiring centralized control or data fusion. Users no longer need any prior knowledge of the network. To counter three potential categories of spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attacks, some anti-attack strategies are applied to the iterative process of information exchange. This enables most authentic users to exclude potentially malicious users from their neighborhood. As represented by simulation results, the proposed scheme can generally ensure that most authentic users reach a consensus within the given number of iterations, and it also demonstrates much better robustness against different SSDF attacks than several existing schemes.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.4661-4680
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• 2016

Cognitive radio (CR) technology is an effective solution to the spectrum scarcity issue. Collaborative spectrum sensing is known as a promising technique to improve the performance of spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks (CRNs). However, collaborative spectrum sensing is vulnerable to spectrum data falsification (SSDF) attack, where malicious users (MUs) may send false sensing data to mislead other secondary users (SUs) to make an incorrect decision about primary user (PUs) activity, which is one of the key adversaries to the performance of CRNs. In this paper, we propose a coalition based malicious users detection (CMD) algorithm to detect the malicious user in CRNs. The proposed CMD algorithm can efficiently detect MUs base on the Geary'C theory and be modeled as a coalition formation game. Specifically, SSDF attack is one of the key issues to affect the resource allocation process. Focusing on the security issues, in this paper, we analyze the power allocation problem with MUs, and propose MUs detection based power allocation (MPA) algorithm. The MPA algorithm is divided into two steps: the MUs detection step and the optimal power allocation step. Firstly, in the MUs detection step, by the CMD algorithm we can obtain the MUs detection probability and the energy consumption of MUs detection. Secondly, in the optimal power allocation step, we use the Lagrange dual decomposition method to obtain the optimal transmission power of each SU and achieve the maximum utility of the whole CRN. Numerical simulation results show that the proposed CMD and MPA scheme can achieve a considerable performance improvement in MUs detection and power allocation.