Practical Realization of Reactive Jamming Attack on Long-Range Wide-Area Network

LoRaWANs are increasingly recognized for their vulnerability to various jamming attacks, which can significantly disrupt communication between end nodes and gateways. This paper explores the feasibility of executing reactive jammers upon detecting packet transmission using commercially available equipment based on software-defined radios (SDRs). The proposed approach demonstrates how attackers can exploit packet detection to initiate targeted interference, effectively compromising message integrity. Two distinct experimental setups, one using separate SDRs for reception and transmission, and another leveraging a single SDR for both functions, were used to evaluate attack efficiency, reaction times, and packet loss ratios. Our experiments demonstrate that both scenarios effectively jam LoRaWAN packets across a range of spreading factors and payload sizes. This finding underscores a pressing need for enhanced security measures to maintain reliability and counter sophisticated attacks.

Sensors, 25(8), 2383