Distance Hijacking Attacks on Distance Bounding Protocols

Abstract

Distance bounding protocols are typically analyzed with respect to three types of attacks: Distance Fraud, Mafia Fraud, and Terrorist Fraud. We define and analyze a fourth main type of attack on distance bounding protocols, called Distance Hijacking. We show that many proposed distance bounding protocols are vulnerable to this type of attack, and we propose solutions to make these protocols resilient to Distance Hijacking. We further show that verifying distance bounding protocols using existing informal and formal frameworks does not guarantee the absence of Distance Hijacking attacks.