Shape matters, not the size: a new approach to extract secrets from channel

Abstract

Existing secret key extraction techniques use quantization to map wireless channel amplitudes to secret bits. This paper shows that such techniques are highly prone to environment and local noise effects: They have very high mismatch rates between the two nodes that measure the channel between them. This paper advocates using the shape of the channel instead of the size (or amplitude) of the channel. It shows that this new paradigm shift is significantly robust against environmental and local noises. We refer to this shape-based technique as Puzzle. Implementation in a software-defined radio (SDR) platform demonstrates that Puzzle has a 63% reduction in bit mismatch rate than the state-of-art frequency domain approach (CSI-2bit). Experiments also show that unlike the state-of-the-art received signal strength (RSS)-based methods like ASBG, Puzzle is robust against an attack in which an eavesdropper can predict the secret bits using planned movements.