Downlink Control Information Sniffing-Based Smart Jamming and Its Suppression Strategy in 5G NR
Summary
This paper describes a vulnerability in 5G networks where an attacker can intercept scheduling information from downlink control information (DCI, the signals that tell devices which radio resources to use) and use it to jam the PUSCH (physical uplink shared channel, the main data transmission channel from devices to the network). To defend against this DCI sniffing-based smart jamming attack, the researchers propose a suppression method that identifies which DCI-scheduled resources are being attacked and reconstructs the PUSCH transmission by leveraging differences in spatial domain features between legitimate users and attackers.
Solution / Mitigation
The proposed suppression method leverages DCI-scheduled subset identification and PUSCH resource reconstruction. It fundamentally relies on differences in spatial domain features under available control channel elements and resource block group granularities between legitimate users and the attacker, to selectively exclude unwanted elements while safeguarding the authenticity of targeted transmissions.
Classification
Original source: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11480180
First tracked: May 8, 2026 at 08:01 PM
Classified by LLM (prompt v3) · confidence: 95%