A Framework for MIMO-based Packet Header Obfuscation

Eavesdroppers can exploit exposed packet headers towards attacks that profile clients and their data flows. In this paper, we propose FOG, a framework for effective header blinding using MIMO, to thwart eavesdroppers. FOG effectively tracks header bits as they traverse physical (PHY) layer sub-systems that perform functions like scrambling and interleaving. It combines multiple blinding signals for more effective and less predictable obfuscation, as compared to using a fixed blinding signal. We implement FOG on the WARP platform and demonstrate via extensive experiments that it yields better obfuscation than prior schemes that deploy full packet blinding. It causes a bit error rate (BER) of > 40 % at an eavesdropper if two blinding streams are sent during header transmissions. Furthermore, FOG incurs a very small throughput hit of ≈ 5 % with one blinding stream (and 9 % with two streams). Full packet blinding incurs much higher throughput hits (25 % with one stream and 50 % with two streams).