Cooperative Primary User Emulation Attack and Defense in Cognitive Radio Networks

Primary user emulation attack is a typical attack in cognitive radio networks. The variance of the shadow fading channel is an effective parameter to determine the source of a signal. In this paper, we first propose a potential threat in cognitive radio networks based on the cooperation of two attackers. In the attack, two cooperative users adjust their transmit power respectively to imitate the channel parameter so as to confuse other secondary users. Then, we demonstrate that this attack can be defeated by the joint decision of multiple secondary users.