Potential denial of service attacks in IEEE802.16e-2005 networks

Unlike a conventional wired network, a wireless network system is susceptible to attacks from malicious parties without the need to physically be present near the network entities or its equipments. With a large coverage area serving up to 50 km in distance, the IEEE802.16 broadband wireless access (BWA) standard was designed from the ground up with security features built-in to circumvent security issues found in the IEEE802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) system. However, there are still several unaddressed security vulnerabilities present. This paper presents one of the possible attacks namely the denial of service (DoS) attacks on the IEEE802.16e-2005 Mobile WiMAX networks. Our simulation shows that a DoS attack exploiting the design of UL-MAP and RNG-RSP messages is devastating to the overall service levels of the WiMAX network.