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

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Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm 2009)

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.

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© 2009 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Cai, L., Maganis, G., Zang, H., Chen, H. (2009). Mitigating DoS Attacks on the Paging Channel by Efficient Encoding in Page Messages. In: Chen, Y., Dimitriou, T.D., Zhou, J. (eds) Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. SecureComm 2009. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 19. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-05284-2_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-05284-2_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-05283-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-05284-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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