Lightweight Attacks against Channel Assignment Protocols in MIMC Wireless Networks

Although multi-interface multi-channel (MIMC) wireless networks have drawn much attention, they are susceptible to various attacks. This paper describes three new types of attacks against a variety of channel assignment protocols: utilization-based conflict attack, link break attack, and denial-of-data attack. These attacks exploit the vulnerabilities arising from the inherent properties of channel assignment protocols in MIMC wireless networks. Analysis and simulation show that the identified attacks are not only very lightweight in attacking but also devastating to the connectivity, throughput, and availability of the MIMC wireless networks.