Guaranteeing Spoof-Resilient Multi-Robot Networks
Stephanie Gil, Swarun Kumar, Mark Mazumder, Dina Katabi, Daniela L. Rus · 2015
Multi-robot networks use wireless communication to provide wide-ranging services such as aerial surveillance and unmanned delivery.However, effective coordination between multiple robots requires trust, making them particularly vulnerable to cyber-attacks.Specifically, such networks can be gravely disrupted by the Sybil attack, where even a single malicious robot can spoof a large number of fake clients.This paper proposes a new solution to defend against the Sybil attack, without requiring expensive cryptographic key-distribution.Our core contribution is a novel algorithm implemented on commercial Wi-Fi radios that can "sense" spoofers using the physics of wireless signals.We derive theoretical guarantees on how this algorithm bounds the impact of the Sybil Attack on a broad class of robotic coverage problems.We experimentally validate our claims using a team of AscTec quadrotor servers and iRobot Create ground clients, and demonstrate spoofer detection rates over 96%.