Automated testing for cyber threats to ad-hoc wireless networks

Incremental Adaptive Corrective Learning is a method for testing ad-hoc wireless networks for vulnerabilities that adversaries can exploit. It is based on an evolutionary search for tests that define behaviors for adversary-controlled network nodes. The search incrementally increases the number of such nodes and first adapts each new node to the behaviors of the already existing attackers before improving the behavior of all attackers. Tests are evaluated in simulations and behaviors are corrected to fulfill all protocol induced obligations that are not explicitly targeted for an exploit. In this paper, we substantiate the claim that this is a general method by instantiating it for different vulnerability goals and by presenting an application for cooperative collision avoidance using VANETs. In all those instantiations, the method is able to produce concrete tests that demonstrate vulnerabilities.