Title:
False base station detection using received sequence and signal strength during handover
False base station detection using received sequence and signal strength during handover
Author(s)
Li, Xiangyu
Advisor(s)
Ma, Xiaoli
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Abstract
False Base Station (FBS) attack has been a severe security problem for the cellular network since the appearance of the 2nd Generation Mobile Communication System (2G). FBS has high mobility and anonymity - it can be hidden in a mobile vehicle such as a car, or a static and public place such as a hotel, and initiate attacks. By imitating an existing legal base station (LBS) with the same broadcast information and transmitting signals of enough power, FBS can attract user equipments (UEs) in a certain range to hand off to it from the source base station (BS). Although the systematic handover mechanism has been published and strictly revised in recent years, the risks of being attacked in the handover stage still exist. This arises from the in-built backward compatibility of previous generations of communication systems. In order to prevent such attacks in the evolution of communication systems, more secure detection schemes are supposed to be investigated. Based on these, this thesis proposes two types of detection schemes against FBS attack. The main contents are as summarized follow:
First, in view of received signal strength (RSS), an improved sensor node (SN)-assisted detection scheme is proposed. This scheme first deduces formulas of RSS at UE and SN under the channel model of block Rayleigh fading. The current standards of handover are analyzed and the feedback information including RSS can be inserted in the transmitted signals. By combining the likelihood function (LF) and probability distribution of RSS feedback from both UE and SN, the simulation results show that with additional RSS feedback information, the performance of this SN-assisted detection scheme is better than that of the existing RSS-based detection schemes.
Second, in view of the physical layer components of received signals, a sequence-based detection scheme is proposed. This scheme first analyzes the structure of the received signals from BS to UE in blocks and symbols. Several additional blocks of symbols are added to the current signal sequence for the verification of signal legitimacy. By designing a long table of symbols, every UE which needs handover can be allocated a specific sequence from the table. The simulation results show that the performance of this sequence-based detection scheme is better than that of any existing ones, even when the transmit power is specifically designed and employed by FBS.
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Date Issued
2023-05-02
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Text
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Thesis