The document presents an analysis of energy depletion attacks on wireless devices, specifically focusing on smartphones and Zigbee-based networks. It discusses various attack types, including denial-of-sleep and electromagnetic interference, and provides experimental results demonstrating the effectiveness of these attacks. Conclusions emphasize the ease of implementing energy depletion attacks and suggest the need for protective measures against such vulnerabilities.

1. Analysis of Energy Depletion
Attacks:
Wireless Device Cases
Vasily Desnitsky
Laboratory of Computer Security Problems, SPIIRAS,
The Bonch-Bruevich Saint-Petersburg State
University of Telecommunications
Vladislav Aleksandrov
University ITMO,
Positive Technologies

2. Wireless network devices

3. Objectives
o State-of-the-art
o Analysis of energy depletion attacks
o Modeling energy depletion attacks on two use cases
• Smartphone
• ZigBee-based network
o Experiments
o Conclusions

4. Existing papers
Article title Country/University Year
Defending Against Resource Depletion Attacks in Wireless Sensor
Networks.
India 2014
Counteracting Denial-of-Sleep Attacks in Wake-up-radio-based
Sensing Systems.
University of Rome “La
Sapienza”
2016
Mechanisms for Detecting and Preventing Denial of Sleep Attacks
and Strengthening Signals in Wireless Sensor Networks.
India 2015
Effects of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Battery Exhaustion Attacks on
Mobile Devices.
Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State
University
2010
An Intrusion Detection System for Battery Exhaustion Attacks on
Mobile Computers.
Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State
University
2005
etc.

5. Attacks types
o Denial-of-sleep
o Traffic increase
o Electromagnetic interference (jamming attack)
o Software misuse

6. Attacks evaluation
Denial-of-sleep
Traffic increase
Electromagnetic
interference
(jamming attack)
Software misuse
Barrier to entry
Cost of
the operations
Effectiveness Protection costs

7. Effectiveness of Denial-of-sleep attacks
GPS
5 µA vs. 10 mA
WiFi
1 µA vs. 1 mA
Bluetooth
5 µA vs. 5 mA
GSM
5 µA vs. 50 mA
NFC
10 µA vs. 5 mA
Current consumption: in sleep mode vs. idle mode

8. Use case 1: Smartphone

9. Device OS
Measurements of
energy consumption Wireless network
Nexus 5 Android 6
(Marshmallow)
Reading battery
charge
by Battery HD
measuring application
Bluetooth

10. Simulating Denial-of-Sleep attack
Kali Linux based simulation of
an attack on Bluetooth
module by means of
o Bluetoothctl - to detect the
device and obtain information
on it
o L2ping - to accomplish the
attack by pinging the device
permanently

11. Experimental results
Battery charge
Spent during 4hours,
Bluetooth working
in sleep mode
4%
Nexus 5 was used as a test device. Cellular module and Bluetooth were active during the test.
Screen and other energy consuming modules were off.
Battery charge
Spent during 4 hours of
Denial-of-Sleep attack,
Bluetooth working
16%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0:00 0:20 0:40 1:00 1:20 1:40 2:00 2:20 2:40 3:00 3:20 3:40
Chargepercentage
Time

12. Use case 2: ZigBee-based network

13. Device OS
Measurements of
energy consumption
XBee S2 Digi XBee s2
platform
Measurement of
current consumption
by MAX471 measuring
module
ZigBee
2.4 ГГц
Wireless network

14. Scheme of the experiments
MAX471
(current sensor)
Arduino MEGA
XBee S2XBee S2
Arduino UNO
Attacker Mesuaring circuit
Target XBee

15. Simulating Denial-of-Sleep attack
Simulating Denial-of-Sleep
attack on ZigBee module by
using XCTU to
o detect the device and obtain
information on it
o accomplish the attack by
sending remote API
commands permanently

16. Experimental results
1. In normal mode 2. Undo attack2.3 (mW) 140.5 (mW)
W1/W2 = 61

17. Conclusions
o Energy depletion attack
• effective
• easy to implement
o Protection tools

18. Thank you for your attention!
Vasily Desnitsky, desnitsky@comsec.spb.ru
Contact