Spectrum Vulnerabilities - Part II : Recommendations for Identifying and Understanding Spectrum Vulnerabilities

Abstract

Exploited spectrum vulnerabilities can result in a range of consequences. At their most inconsequential, they may disrupt an individual or small group from communicating. More significantly, they can facilitate large-scale disruptions to communications, resulting in social, economic, and perhaps even unintended physical harm. At their worst, spectrum vulnerabilities can be used to cause intentional physical injuries. For example, individual and small-scale bad actors could use GPS spoofing to direct a person into harm’s way, disrupt vehicle-to-vehicle communications to cause accidents, or hack automated medical devices, such as insulin pumps or heart defibrillators, with fatal results. In a military setting, techniques like spectral herding can force enemies to communicate on chosen spectrum bands with greater vulnerabilities that can then be used to locate targets or send conflicting communications, as is thought to have occurred to Ukrainian forces during Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Despite these risks, most spectrum vulnerabilities remain unaddressed. In Part I of this column, I discussed the systematic and technological challenges to identifying and understanding spectrum vulnerabilities. These challenges were identified at a roundtable discussion convened by Silicon Flatirons, which included experts from government, academia, and industry. I was permitted to report on conclusions reached from the discussion. In Part II, I reveal some of the solutions offered by the roundtable participants to the challenges they identified. These solutions are a starting point, they are not fully developed, nor do they fully address each challenge. Nevertheless, I take a similar approach to presenting the solutions as I did in Part I, beginning with those that address systematic challenges and concluding with those that address technological challenges.1