Surveillance and Intervention of Infrastructure-Free Mobile Communications: A New Wireless Security Paradigm

Abstract: Conventional wireless security assumes wireless communications are rightful and aims to protect them against malicious eavesdropping and jamming attacks. However, emerging infrastructure-free mobile communication networks are likely to be illegally used (e.g., by criminals or terrorists) but difficult to be monitored, thus imposing new challenges on the public security. To tackle this issue, this article presents a paradigm shift of wireless security to the surveillance and intervention of infrastructure-free suspicious and malicious wireless communications, by exploiting legitimate eavesdropping and jamming jointly. In particular, {\emph{proactive eavesdropping}} (via jamming) is proposed to intercept and decode information from suspicious communication links for the purpose of inferring their intentions and deciding further measures against them. {\emph{Cognitive jamming}} (via eavesdropping) is also proposed so as to disrupt, disable, and even spoof the targeted malicious wireless communications to achieve various intervention tasks.