A Game-Theoretic Approach to EDCA Remapping Attacks

IEEE 802.11 networks are known to allow MAC-layer misbehavior, especially backoff attacks. We consider another type of attack, called EDCA remapping, related to the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access function. It consists in remapping frames to a higher priority to achieve better throughput or Quality of Service. This attack is easy to perform yet hard to detect without precise traffic analysis. Using a game-theoretic model we show via simulation that with boundedly rational stations, EDCA remapping can be made either pointless or harmless in the long term.