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

Abstract

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.