Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. 5th International ICST Conference, SecureComm 2009, Athens, Greece, September 14-18, 2009, Revised Selected Papers

Research Article

Mitigating DoS Attacks on the Paging Channel by Efficient Encoding in Page Messages

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-05284-2_1,
        author={Liang Cai and Gabriel Maganis and Hui Zang and Hao Chen},
        title={Mitigating DoS Attacks on the Paging Channel by Efficient Encoding in Page Messages},
        proceedings={Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. 5th International ICST Conference, SecureComm 2009, Athens, Greece, September 14-18, 2009, Revised Selected Papers},
        proceedings_a={SECURECOMM},
        year={2012},
        month={5},
        keywords={Paging DoS Attacks General Page Message Quick Paging},
        doi={10.1007/978-3-642-05284-2_1}
    }
    
  • Liang Cai
    Gabriel Maganis
    Hui Zang
    Hao Chen
    Year: 2012
    Mitigating DoS Attacks on the Paging Channel by Efficient Encoding in Page Messages
    SECURECOMM
    Springer
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-05284-2_1
Liang Cai1,*, Gabriel Maganis1,*, Hui Zang2,*, Hao Chen1,*
  • 1: University of California
  • 2: Sprint Advanced Technology Labs
*Contact email: lngcai@ucdavis.edu, gymaganis@ucdavis.edu, hui.zang@sprint.com, hchen@cs.ucdavis.edu

Abstract

Paging is an important mechanism for network bandwidth efficiency and mobile terminal battery life. It has been widely adopted by mobile networks, such as cellular networks, WiMax, and Mobile IP. Due to certain mechanisms for achieving paging efficiency and the convergence of wireless voice and data networks, the paging channel is vulnerable to inexpensive DoS attacks. To mitigate these attacks, we propose to leverage the knowledge of the user population size, the slotted nature of the paging operation, and the quick paging mechanism to reduce the length of terminal identifiers. In the case of a CDMA2000 system, we can reduce each identifier from 34 bits down to 7 bits, effectively doubling the paging channel capacity. Moreover, our scheme incurs no paging latency, missed pages, or false pages. Using a simulator and data collected from a commercial cellular network, we demonstrate that our scheme doubles the cost for DoS attackers.