A security patch addressing bandwidth request vulnerabilities in the IEEE 802.16 standard

Abstract

© 2016 IEEE. This article analyzes security vulnerabilities in bandwidth allocation and request mechanisms that are specified in the IEEE 802.16 Standard, and introduces a bandwidth request adversary model called UL-BRA based on these vulnerabilities. The goal of UL-BRA is to abuse the bandwidth request/grant operation of a WiMAX network, resulting in a significant decrease of the overall uplink transmission performance of the network. To overcome the challenge caused by the vulnerabilities of the standard, we propose a security patch incorporating a real-time anomaly detection and restoration (RADR) mechanism, which combines an MCDR scheme with an ATD scheme in order to eliminate the impacts of UL-BRA in real-time. We verify the effectiveness of RADR under UL-BRA threats via simulations, and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed patch in mitigating the threats of UL-BRA.