Jamming attacks and defenses for fast association in IEEE 802.11ah networks

Abstract

To reduce network congestion, most fast association mechanisms in 802.11ah networks control the number of devices to associate each round based on the management queue size. However, the management queue can be manipulated easily by jamming attacks. In this paper, we discover such a vulnerability and analyze possible attack models, including continuous, periodic, and reactive jamming that can effectively exploit the vulnerability. To analyze the impact of jamming, we propose mathematical models to study the association process under jamming. Our finding is that jamming attacks can fail the association process and disable the connectivity of the network, which causes IoT applications such as security surveillance and critical event reporting unavailable. To defense the problem, we also propose methods to address different types of jamming attacks. Experiment results show that our proposals can defend against jamming attacks effectively.