The timing channel is a logical communication channel in which information is encoded in the timing between events. Recently, the use of the timing channel has been proposed as a countermeasure to reactive jamming attacks performed by an energy- constrained malicious node. In fact, while a jammer is able to disrupt the information contained in the attacked packets, timing information cannot be jammed, and therefore, timing channels can be exploited to deliver information to the receiver even on a jammed channel. Since the nodes under attack and the jammer have conflicting interests, their interactions can be modeled by means of game theory. Accordingly, in this paper, a game-theoretic model of the interactions between nodes exploiting the timing channel to achieve resilience to jamming attacks and a jammer is derived and analyzed. More specifically, the Nash equilibrium is studied in terms of existence, uniqueness, and convergence under best response dynamics. Furthermore, the case in which the communication nodes set their strategy and the jammer reacts accordingly is modeled and analyzed as a Stackelberg game, by considering both perfect and imperfect knowledge of the jammer’s utility function. Extensive numerical results are presented, showing the impact of network parameters on the system performance. Defeating Jamming With the Power of Silence A Game-Theoretic Analysis
Recently, use of timing channels has been proposed in the wireless domain to support low rate, energy efficient communications as well as covert and resilient communications. In existing system methodologies to detect jamming attacks are illustrated; it is also shown that it is possible to identify which kind of jamming attack is ongoing by looking at the signal strength and other relevant network parameters, such as bit and packet errors. Several solutions against reactive jamming have been proposed that exploit different techniques, such as frequency hopping, power control and UN jammed bits.
Our proposed system implementation focus on the resilience of timing channels to jamming attacks. In general, these attacks can completely disrupt communications when the jammer continuously emits a high power disturbing signal, i.e., when continuous jamming is performed.
Analyze the interactions between the jammer and the node whose transmissions are under attack, which we call target node. Specifically, we assume that the target node wants to maximize the amount of information that can be transmitted per unit of time by means of the timing channel, whereas, the jammer wants to minimize such amount of information while reducing the energy expenditure.
As the target node and the jammer have conflicting interests, we develop a game theoretical framework that models their interactions. We investigate both the case in which these two adversaries play their strategies simultaneously and the situation when the target node (the leader) anticipates the actions of the jammer (the follower). To this purpose, we study both the Nash Equilibria (NEs) and Stackelberg Equilibria (SEs) of our proposed games.