We unveil the existence of a vulnerability in Wi-Fi (802.11) networks, which allows an adversary to remotely launch a denial-of-service (DoS) attack that propagates both in time and space. This vulnerability stems from a coupling effect induced by hidden nodes. Cascading DoS attacks can congest an entire network and do not require the adversary to violate any protocol. We demonstrate the feasibility of such attacks through experiments with real Wi-Fi cards, theoretical analysis, and ns-3 simulations. The experiment shows that an attacker can cause the throughput of a node outside its communication range to vanish. To gain insight into the root causes of the attack, we model the network as a dynamical system and analyze its limiting behavior and stability. The model predicts that a phase transition (and hence a cascading attack) is possible in linear networks when the retry limit parameter of Wi-Fi is greater or equal to 7, and also characterizes the phase transition region in terms of the system parameters.

中文翻译：

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Wi-Fi网络的级联攻击：理论与实验

我们揭示了Wi-Fi（802.11）网络中存在一个漏洞，该漏洞使攻击者可以远程发起随时间和空间传播的拒绝服务（DoS）攻击。此漏洞源自隐藏节点引起的耦合效应。级联式DoS攻击可能会使整个网络拥塞，并且不需要对手违反任何协议。通过真实的Wi-Fi卡实验，理论分析和ns-3仿真，我们证明了此类攻击的可行性。实验表明，攻击者可能导致节点超出其通信范围的吞吐量消失。为了深入了解攻击的根本原因，我们将网络建模为动态系统，并分析其限制行为和稳定性。