On Pilot Spoofing Attack in Massive MIMO Systems: Detection and Countermeasure

Abstract

Massive MIMO systems are vulnerable to pilot spoofing attacks (PSAs) since the estimated channel state information can be contaminated by the eavesdropping link, thus incurring severe information leakage in downlink transmission. To safeguard legitimate communications, this paper proposes a PSA detection method which relies on pilot manipulation. Specifically, users randomly partition pilot sequences into two parts, where the first part remains unchanged and the second one is multiplied with a diagonal matrix. Although a malicious node may follow the same way to send pilots, this makes it more likely to be detected. According to the principle of the likelihood-ratio test, the proposed detector is designed based on a decision metric that does not include the legitimate channel. This feature differentiates our scheme from existing ones and remarkably improves the detection accuracy. Besides, the possibility of performance enhancement by joint detection is discussed. Furthermore, based on pilot manipulation, a jamming-resistant receiver is designed. The key of this receiver is a new channel estimator that is robust to the PSA. Finally, extensive simulations are carried out to validate our proposed algorithms.

Security and privacy for 6G: A survey on prospective technologies and challenges

“…Ylianttila et al [29] highlight several key technologies of 6G security and privacy along with their challenges that remain, but no discussion on connection and service layer security. On the other hand, many authors have carried out surveys on narrower issues, such as physical layer security [33], [34], [36], quantum-safe security technologies [35], [45], AI-driven security [6], [31], trusted networks [30], which are supposed to be the top priorities in 6G. Recently, the authors in [37] highlight possible security and privacy challenges in different 6G technologies and applications.…”

“…To satisfy requirements such as network speeds greater that 1Tbps, many bet on THz communications and ultra-massive MIMO antenna technologies. Despite impressive initial results, these technologies have proved to be vulnerable to physical layer attacks, such as jamming and pilot contamination attacks [36]. Therefore, enhancing security of THz communications and relevant technologies such as NOMA/LIS/Holographic Radio is an important issue.…”

Direction‐based jamming detection and suppression in mmWave massive MIMO networks

“…This is of high importance especially for operation in hostile environments. The problems of jamming detection and suppression are discussed in many of the prior works in the field of physical layer security in massive MIMO systems [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. In [8], a jamming attack detection scheme is proposed based on pilots drawn randomly from a known constellation.…”

“…Also in [13], the intentionally unallocated pilots are leveraged by the authors to propose a jamming detection technique. Authors of [14,15] propose two similar approaches based on double channel training where the received signals during two training phases in a single coherence block are compared to determine the presence of pilot spoofing attack. None of the aforementioned researches or other related works utilize directional information for detecting the presence of the jamming attack.…”

Acquisition of Time and Doppler Shift in WFRFT Encrypted Chaotic Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum System

“…However, the pilot signal destroys the aperiodicity of the transmitted signal and reduces the antiinterception performance of the transmitted signal. When the pilot signal is detected, the noncooperative receivers can implement targeted jamming on the pilot to disrupt the acquisition [18], [19]. Therefore, this study does not use the pilot signal to assist the acquisition.…”