Project Overview
Secure Device Trust Bootstrapping Against Collaborative Signal Modification Attacks (IEEE INFOCOM 2023) explores new methods to establish trust among wireless devices without relying on pre-shared secrets or additional hardware. Traditional in-band authentication (IBA) protocols are often vulnerable to Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks, where adversaries can cancel or inject RF signals to manipulate communication channels. This work introduces a novel software-based trust bootstrapping protocol that leverages each device’s internal randomness to detect and resist collaborative signal modification attacks.
Key Contributions
In-band security: Trust bootstrapping performed directly over RF communication without requiring extra hardware.
Resilience against colluding attackers: First solution that thwarts multiple adversaries coordinating signal cancellation attacks.
Internal randomness: Devices randomly flip bits in authentication messages, making modifications detectable with high probability.
Experimental validation: Implemented and tested on USRP-based testbed, demonstrating high detection probability even under strong attacker models.
Impact
This research strengthens the foundation of secure device pairing for IoT, mobile, and mission-critical systems, where heterogeneous devices must collaborate securely in real-world environments. It has implications for NextG, ISAC, and O-RAN security frameworks.
@INPROCEEDINGS{10229007,
author={Xue, Xiaochan and Yu, Shucheng and Song, Min},
booktitle={IEEE INFOCOM 2023 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications},
title={Secure Device Trust Bootstrapping Against Collaborative Signal Modification Attacks},
year={2023},
pages={1-10},
keywords={Wireless communication; Radio frequency; Protocols; RF signals; Communication channels; Hardware; Mobile applications; Device pairing; in-band; MitM attack; signal cancellation attack},
doi={10.1109/INFOCOM53939.2023.10229007}
}