TESEO - Testing jamming attacks and security countermeasures for underwater networks

Access/Technology provider: NATO STO, T-LOON

End User: WSense Ltd, UK [Industry]

Dates: March 2020 -December 2020

Goals: This TNA proposes to use the NATO STO T-LOON testbed, extended with additional assets (additional nodes), to test and validate JANUS enabled networks, as well as JANUS networks applications.

Multiple signals were transmitted and recorded under different environmental conditions. Various experimental configurations (single transmitter and concurrent transmitters) were explored, according to the requests of the applicant. Strict interaction between the applicant and NATO STO personnel was ensured to: 1) plan the new experimental activities; 2) validate the provided signals and experimental requests; 3) verify the collected data; and 4) share the acquired data.
This project was led by WSENSE LTD (UK). In this project a Jamming signal was designed for avoiding the correct decoding of JANUS packets. During this project the effectiveness of the Jammer was characterized by exploiting different transmission configurations such as the transmitted power by the source and the Jammer, the distance of the Jammer from the source and the receiver, the time delay performing the Jamming attack and different Jamming signals. As a possible countermeasure, a localization technique  was investigated  that could be adopted for reacting against a Jamming attack. By exploiting the time delay between the superimposed signal, injected by the Jammer, and those sent by the honest source it was possible to localize the Jammer.

Publications

The research carried out during the project has led to the refinement of a e Paper, ready to be submitted, entitled “Jamming Detection, Localization and Reaction in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks” which provides theoretical foundations on how to correctly identify the activity of a Jammer in an underwater acoustic network providing simulations results about the proposed approach and counter measures techniques to avoid the Jamming activity.