Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided Pilot Contamination Attack and Its Countermeasure

Pilot contamination attack (PCA) in a time division duplex wireless communication system is considered, where an eavesdropper (Eve) attacks the reverse pilot transmission phase order to wiretap data transmitted from transmitter, Alice, receiver, Bob. We propose new PCA scheme for Eve, wherein Eve does not emit any signal by itself but uses intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) reflect sent Bob Alice. The proposed scheme, referred as IRS-PCA, increases leakage Alice IRS during phase, which then reflected improve wiretapping capability of Eve. IRS-PCA disables many existing countermeasures on due fact that with no longer needs know sequence Bob, and therefore, poses severe threat security legitimate system. In view this, problems 1) detection 2) secure under are considered this paper. For detection, generalized cumulative sum (GCUSUM) procedure based framework quickest aiming at detecting occurrence soon possible once it occurs. cooperative channel estimation estimate IRS, zero-forcing beamforming designed reduce leakage.