Secret Key Extraction from Wireless Signal Strength in Real Environments

Secret Key Extraction from Wireless Signal

Strength in Real Environments

Abstract—

We evaluate the effectiveness of secret key extraction, for private communication between two wireless devices, from the received signal strength (RSS) variations on the wireless channel between the two devices. We use real world measurements of RSS in a variety of environments and settings. The results from our experiments with 802.11 based laptops show that (i) in certain environments, due to lack of variations in the wireless channel, the extracted bits have very low entropy making these bits unsuitable for a secret key, (ii) an adversary can cause predictable key generation in these static environments, and (iii) in dynamic scenarios where the two devices are mobile, and/or where there is a significant movement in the environment, high entropy bits are obtained fairly quickly. Building on the strengths of existing secret key extraction approaches, we develop an environment adaptive secret key generation scheme that uses an adaptive lossy quantizer in conjunction with Cascade-based information reconciliation [9] and privacy amplification [15]. 

Our measurements show that our scheme, in comparison to the existing ones that we evaluate, performs the best in terms of generating high entropy bits at a high bit rate. The secret key bit streams generated by our scheme also pass the randomness tests of the NIST test suite [1] that we conduct. We also build and evaluate the performance of secret key extraction using small, lowpower, hand-held devices - Google Nexus One phones - that are equipped 802.11 wireless network cards. Last, we evaluate secret key extraction in a multiple input multiple output (MIMO)-like sensor network testbed that we create using multiple TelosB sensor nodes. We find that our MIMO-like sensor environment produces prohibitively high bit mismatch, which we address using an iterative distillation stage that we add to the key extraction process. Ultimately, we show that the secret key generation rate is increased when multiple sensors are involved in the key extraction process.

Scope of the Project:

We evaluated the effectiveness of secret key extraction from the received signal strength (RSS) variations in wireless channels using extensive real world measurements in a variety of environments and settings. Our experimental results showed that bits extracted in static environments are unsuitable for generating a secret key.

We also found that an adversary can cause predictable key generation in static environments. However, bits extracted in dynamic environments showed a much higher secret bit rate. We developed an environment adaptive secret key generation scheme and our measurements showed that our scheme performed the best in terms of generating high entropy bits at a high bit rate in comparison to the existing ones that we evaluated.

The secret key bit streams generated by our scheme also passed the randomness tests of the NIST test suite that we conducted. We were able to further enhance the rate of secret bit generation of our scheme by extracting multiple bits from each RSS measurement

Literature Survey:

Public key cryptography consumes significant amount of computing resources and power which might not be available in certain scenarios (e.g., sensor networks). More importantly, concerns about the security of public keys in the future have spawned research on methods that do not use public keys. Quantum cryptography  is a good example of an innovation that does not use public keys. It uses the laws of Quantum theory.specifically Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, for sharing a secret between two end points. Although quantum cryptography applications have started to appear recently [12], they are still very rare and expensive.

This asymmetry in measurements brings up the challenge of how to make Alice and Bob agree upon the same bits without giving  out too much information on the channel that can be used by Eve to recreate secret bits between Alice and Bob.

Azimi-Sadjadi et al. [6] suggested using two wellknown techniques from quantum cryptography – information reconciliation and privacy amplification, to tackle the challenge caused by RSS measurement asymmetry. Information reconciliation techniques (e.g., Cascade [9]) leak out minimal information to correct those bits that do not match at Alice and Bob. Privacy amplification [15] reduces the amount of information the attacker can have about the derived key. This is achieved by letting both Alice and Bob use universal hash functions, chosen at random from a publicly known set of such functions, to transform the reconciled bit stream into a nearly perfect random bit stream

Most of the previous research work on RSS-based secret key extraction, including that of Azimi-Sadjadi et al. [6], is based on either simulations or theoretical analysis. Other than the recent work by Mathur et al. [20] that was performed in a specific indoor environment, there is very little research on evaluating how effective RSS-based key extraction is in real environments under real settings.