Vulnerabilities Exposing IEEE 802.16e Networks to DoS Attacks: A Survey

This paper presents a review of security vulnerabilities found in IEEE 802.16e that are still unaddressed. In particular vulnerabilities leading to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on IEEE 802.16e based network are discussed in detail. These vulnerabilities include unprotected Network entry, unencrypted management communication, unprotected management frames and weak key sharing mechanism in multicast and broadcast operations. Moreover a new vulnerability regarding Reset-Command (RES-CMD) message is identified which can lead to DoS attack on client machines. This paper also presents meticulous discussion of various echelons of cryptographic keys present in IEEE 802.16e communication. In addition, few broad solution strategies are discussed to mitigate these vulnerabilities.