Security of Software Defined Radio

Overview

Software Defined Radio (SDR) is a reconfigurable radio technology that reduces the content of radio frequency (RF) and other analog components of traditional radios and emphasizes digital signal processing to enhance overall flexibility. Software radios are a class of reprogrammable or reconfigurable radios. In other words, the same piece of hardware can operate in different radio modes at different times. The radio device can function as a cellular phone, a GPS receiver, an amateur packet radio, or any other sort of radio transmitting or receiving device. We address the key security issues that are crucial in facilitating trustworthiness and reliability of SDR.

Security challenges of SDR device are unique from other wireless devices in that through intentional or unintentional re-configuration of its radio frequency (RF) parameters and link-layer stack, the radio device is capable of acting as a malicious or malfunctioning device, posing serious security threats to the radio network. Our research focuses on the radio configuration and its security.

We developed security requirements and design of a Secure Configuration Framework that provides trusted composition and attestation of radio configuration. We investigated security challenges of deploying reconfigurable devices as communication platforms for substations and field instruments in the power grid. We identified security vulnerabilities that apply to software-defined radio deployed in the power grid.

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