Preventing Radio Fingerprinting through Low-Power Jamming

TL;DR

RF fingerprinting enables passive transmitter identification but raises privacy concerns. The authors introduce FingerJam, a low-power jamming approach that sanitizes RF fingerprints while preserving link quality, formalizing anonymity through $k$-anonymity and $T$-anonymity and validating robustness against CNN and autoencoder classifiers via cable and real-world wireless experiments. Key findings show that controlled jamming can obfuscate fingerprint features without degrading BER, enabling practical privacy for diverse devices; anonymity levels improve with higher Relative Jamming Power ($RJP$) and appropriate attenuator settings. The work establishes a practical, non-invasive privacy mechanism for wireless communications and highlights the need for device-specific calibration against adaptive adversaries, with potential real-world deployment implications for spectrum privacy.

Abstract

Radio Frequency fingerprinting enables a passive receiver to recognize and authenticate a transmitter without the need for cryptographic tools. Authentication is achieved by isolating specific features of the transmitted signal that are unique to the transmitter's hardware. Much research has focused on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of radio frequency fingerprinting to maximize its performance in various scenarios and conditions, while little research examined how to protect devices from being subject to radio fingerprinting in the wild. In this paper, we explore a novel point of view. We examine the threat posed by radio frequency fingerprinting, which facilitates the unauthorized identification of wireless devices in the field by malicious entities. We also suggest a method to sanitize the transmitted signal of its fingerprint using a low-power jammer, deployed on purpose to improve devices' anonymity on the channel while still guaranteeing the link's quality of service. Our experimental results and subsequent analysis demonstrate that a low-power jammer can effectively block a malicious eavesdropper from identifying a device without affecting the quality of the wireless link, thereby restoring the privacy of the user when accessing the radio spectrum.

Figures (15)

• Figure 1: Our scenario, adversary model, and solution. The Eavesdropper wants to identify the presence of the Transmitter at the physical layer, using its RF emissions. The Transmitter protects her identity by deploying a Jammer which removes the radio fingerprint without affecting the quality of the communication. Radio messages M3, M4 and M5 are sanitized of the Transmitter fingerprint.
• Figure 2: Measurement setup: We considered 7 radios and two types of links, the radio and the cable. Radios 1 and 2 are the Eavesdropper/Receiver and the Jammer, respectively, while Radios 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are the Transmitters.
• Figure 3: Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) computation.
• Figure 4: The schematic model of our cable experiments, where the jammer and the transmitter collaborate to prevent the detection of the transmitter by an eavesdropper.
• Figure 5: Cumulative distribution function associated with the amplitude of the received signal, varying the RJP between 0 and 0.5. Radios are connected via cables.