[HN Gopher] Jamming Attacks and Anti-Jamming Strategies in Wirel...
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       Jamming Attacks and Anti-Jamming Strategies in Wireless Networks
        
       Author : adulau
       Score  : 60 points
       Date   : 2021-01-05 10:45 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
        
       | tristanperry wrote:
       | An interesting research paper, thanks for posting it.
       | 
       | I've recently been fairly interested in smart homes, which
       | (alongside WiFi) often use ZigBee and/or Z-Wave protocols.
       | 
       | Whilst Z-Wave isn't covered in this paper, ZigBee (which runs at
       | 2.4 Ghz - but on higher channels than WiFi to prevent overlap) is
       | covered. If I'm reading correctly, the paper seems to say that
       | many anti-jamming techniques are successful with ZigBee, unlike
       | previous research that concludes that it's usually harder to
       | block ZigBee jamming attacks (ref 21)?
        
       | red0point wrote:
       | Funny, I just finished my master thesis in this area. I
       | implemented a highly effective DoS attack for LTE which relies on
       | reactive signal overshadowing, a very efficient type of jamming.
       | Sadly, overshadowing attacks in LTE are not covered in the paper,
       | but have been present for some years now.
       | 
       | Here's the link if anyone is interested:
       | https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000455834
        
       | capableweb wrote:
       | A little bit off-topic but still relevant to jamming. I noticed
       | the other day I went to a big electronics store (Mediamarkt) and
       | noticed that my cellular connection died just as I entered the
       | store. When asking about it, they told me the reception is just
       | so poor there so I should use their WiFi instead. As I wanted to
       | compare products with other stores, I used the WiFi.
       | 
       | But afterwards I started thinking, is it possible to store is
       | doing this on purpose, in order to ex-filtrate data via the WiFi
       | connection? They wouldn't get more than the hostname if it's over
       | https, but who knows what more kind of data they could get from
       | it. They could also block websites of competitors and blame the
       | internet, and prevent consumers from comparing themselves.
       | 
       | Or I'm just a conspiracy-nut lite, but it wouldn't surprise me a
       | lot if it was like that.
        
         | hchz wrote:
         | Can a business model of capturing hostnames pay for the initial
         | and ongoing costs of such a system? Isn't this kind of wireless
         | hardware expensive at the scale of a business like this?
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
         | 
         | I might expect that kind of activity in the US but not the EU.
        
           | buran77 wrote:
           | One of the big problems many of these stores have is that the
           | mobile coverage actually is bad inside due to the building's
           | structure. Many of them are reinforced concrete buildings
           | wrapped in metal cladding (take an IKEA store as an example).
           | So many larger supermarkets in some countries barely have
           | coverage at the cash register so you can pay with a phone but
           | you'll lose coverage as soon as you enter further. They
           | mostly don't offer any solution for this, like WiFi APs or
           | mobile base stations. There's also the much higher density of
           | people at that spot which crowd the same base station.
           | 
           | I'd wager MediaMarkt faced the same issue, wanted to give
           | some internet coverage, and found WiFi to be cheaper or
           | easier to implement and maintain. They may have realized in
           | the meantime that they can extract some useful data too.
        
             | PaulHoule wrote:
             | in the US Target cooperates with cell phone carriers to
             | disable service in their stores.
        
               | metiscus wrote:
               | I am really interested in this.. Do you have a source?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | myself248 wrote:
         | It wouldn't surprise me a bit. Find some hams and head back
         | there with a spectrum analyzer. (Or get yourself a $25 rtlsdr
         | dongle...)
         | 
         | There've also been cases of hotels sending deauth packets to
         | other people's wifi hotspots, to force them to buy the hotel's
         | wifi. Multiply that times a hundred vendors trying to run
         | verifone terminals and stuff in a merch room, and it's a huge
         | money grab.
        
         | swirepe wrote:
         | It's more likely that the big metal walls of store were
         | blocking the signal, instead of intentional jamming. They
         | could, of course, take advantage of that to get people to
         | connect to your wifi. That tells them at least how many people
         | were in the store, and when.
        
         | vuln wrote:
         | You're not crazy... Amazon patented it.
         | 
         | https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15812986/amazon-patent-on...
        
         | devwastaken wrote:
         | After the target hacks stores started to install cellular
         | suppressors. Some removed them because it turns out that's a
         | bad idea. Some did not. Source: used to work with a friend for
         | hardware deployment at stores.
        
         | frakt0x90 wrote:
         | Would it also be possible to estimate your location in the
         | store using multiple access points and the latency between
         | them? They might use that to track where people spend their
         | time.
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-06 23:02 UTC)