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My Project
In 2003-2005 I worked with Dr. Yanyong Zhang, Dr. Wade Trappe, and Wenyuan Xu of the Rutgers WINLAB investigating security issues for wireless networks. Our work focused on detecting and responding to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on sensor networks.
Wireless networks are prone to many security threats because of their use of a shared media – a small frequency spectrum in the airwaves around us. We have developed methods for detecting jamming style DoS attacks at both the MAC and PHY layers, minimizing the chance that heavy traffic will be mistaken for a malicious adversary.
To defend against DoS, we have designed two strategies to minimize the effects on a network. Following the advice of the military strategist Sun Tzu, we choose to retreat from an enemy that otherwise would overwhelm us. One method, Channel Surfing, is a form of spectral evasion, where network nodes change to a different frequency band beyond the transmission range of the jammer. I have tested this protocol on Berkeley motes, low power sensor nodes with tunable radios, and proven that the devices can detect an attack and effectively switch channels to resume their communication. We intend to develop a wireless ad hoc network that is resilient to attackers, yet uses little overhead so that network throughput can be maintained.
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