This project takes an unique viewpoint of exploring the opportunities for cross-layer solutions that utilize the correlation information inherited from location across network stacks to collaboratively defend against security threats. The key insights of this project are: location should be integrated into any wireless network stack as a true partner to cope with attacks and effectively defend against adversaries, and security solutions that can leverage the knowledge provided by location across different network layers is promising to collaboratively enhance wireless security.

This project results in multiple publications centered around four main areas: (1) detecting attacks involving the claimed identity of a mobile device; (2) localizing attackers while coping with the localization infrastructure threats; and (3) utilizing the knowledge combined from lower layers, e.g., the detection of attacks and localization of adversaries, to provide attack resilient secure access to network resources by coping with access violations.

(1) Due to the shared nature of the wireless medium, attackers can gather useful identity information during passive monitoring and further utilize the identity information to launch identity-based attacks, in particular, the two most harmful but easy to launch attacks: spoo?ng attacks and sybil attacks. Identity-based attacks will have a serious impact to the normal operation of wireless and sensor networks. We take a different approach by using the physical properties associated with wireless transmissions to detect identity-based attacks, as well as localizing the adversaries in wireless and sensor networks. We formulate a generalized attack detection model using statistical signi?cance testing. We then provide theoretical analysis of exploiting the spatial correlation of Received Signal Strength (RSS) inherited from wireless nodes for attack detection.

(2) To ensure the availability of wireless networks, mechanisms are needed for the wireless networks to cope with jamming attacks. Most existing anti-jamming work does not consider the location information of radio interferers and jammers. However, this information can provide important insights for networks to manage its resource in different layers and to defend against radio interference. We examine two jamming models, region-based and signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) based, to illustrate the underlying principles that govern the state of a node. We develop mechanisms to localize both single jammer as well as multiple jammers. The two main components in our framework, namely automatic network topology partitioner and intelligent multi-jammer localizer, work together to derive different categories of node clusters and achieve high localization accuracy even under overlapping jammed areas.

(3) The usage of wireless devices (e.g., PDAs, smartphones, and laptops) has become an inseparable part of our daily lives, which actively involves in information sharing and various data transactions in ways that previously were not possible. However, to ensure the successful deployment and adoption of these emerging applications, secure communication is crucial to support data transmission confidentiality, data integrity, and device authentication among multiple wireless devices. We examine secure group communication among multiple wireless devices by exploiting physical layer information of radio channel (e.g., Received Signal Strength and Channel State Information) instead of using the traditional cryptographic-based methods. The main advantage of the secret key generation utilizing physical layer information of radio channel is that it allows any two wireless devices within transmission range of each other to extract a shared symmetric cryptographic key while do not require a fixed infrastructure or a secure communication channel. To enable secure group communication, two proto...

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