Abstract

Encryption via a secret key has been the traditional mode of ensuring security up through the current day. However, due to the increase in high-performance computing the reliability of traditional key encryption has diminished. Physical layer (PHY) security provides a solution that establishes a shared secret key over an unsecured communication channel via the wireless medium. Considering these two phenomena, the main idea of physical layer security lies in the shared wireless channel between two communicating nodes or a transmitter and receiver (T&R) pair. Both T&R observe a specific link signature (LS) upon various factors. With this seminal foundation along with previous research, we set up an experiment from the perspective of an attacker attempting to exploit the T&R's LS with capabilities realistic to a real world attack. Our motivation is to exhaust the vulnerabilities of PHY security to aid in making it more robust in the future. With the use of machine learning (ML) algorithms the experimental results confirm that LS of T&R is exploitable with the use of ML.

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