Transient MAC address scheme for untraceability and DoS attack resiliency on wireless network

Recent advances in wireless networks have raised various security threats, among those tracing and denial of service (DoS) attack on mobile devices. Both threats exploit the existence of fixed hardware addresses of mobile devices. This paper provides a transient media access control (MAC) address-TMAC-scheme that enables mobile devices to escape from tracing and DoS attack. The TMAC scheme is based on a transient MAC address, which is changed by using a network driven updating mechanism. The TMAC scheme is tolerant to errors in wireless links due to a resynchronization mechanism during MAC address changes. Our simulation results show that a continuous attack, which is generally efficient when employed against ordinary mobile devices, is unsuccessful against mobile devices adopting our TMAC scheme. Even though an attacker employs a more suitable attack against the TMAC scheme, the scheme still relieves from damage of the attack.