Assessing the Effect of WiMAX System Parameter Settings on MAC-level Local DoS Vulnerability

The research community has established that WiMAX networks suffer from Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerabilities. In this paper, we analyze how WiMAX system parameter settings increase or decrease DoS vulnerabilities of WiMAX networks. The behavior of the WiMAX MAC level protocol is sensitive to the settings of core system parameters. Unlike traditional network-based DoS attacks, attacks resulting from parameter misconfiguration are difficult for network operators to detect. We focus on bandwidth contention resolution aspects of the WiMAX MAC protocol. Simulations are performed using the ns-2 simulator. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) techniques on the resulting simulation data identify which bandwidth contention resolution parameter combinations are crucial for configuring WiMAX to be less vulnerable to DoS attacks.