Full Prof. Srđan Čapkun, Ph.D.
Physical-Layer Attacks and Their Impact on Wireless Networks: Two Case Studies
In this talk, I will discuss physical layer attacks on wireless networks, including attacks on GNSS systems, UWB ranging and cellular networks. Although these attacks differ in their goals and adversarial models, they share some commonalities - they attack the mechanisms that cannot be solely protected by cryptographic means. In particular, I will show how physical layer attacks can defeat the security of recently deployed commercial UWB ranging systems that are used in modern phones and vehicles. I will then
show how these attacks can be used to deploy powerful DoS and tracking attacks on modern cellular networks. Finally, I will discuss the new research opportunities in this broad domain that emerge with the deployment of new types of networks and communication systems.
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CV & Research Summary
Srdjan Capkun (Srđan Čapkun) is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich and Chair of the Zurich Information Security and Privacy Center (ZISC). Originally from Split, Croatia, he received his Dipl. Ing. Degree in Electrical Engineering / Computer Science from the University of Split in 1998, and his Ph.D. degree in Communication Systems from EPFL in 2004. His research interests are in system and network security. His focus areas are wireless security (in particular secure positioning), and system security where he focuses on trusted computing and blockchain technologies. He is a co-founder of 3db Access (acquired by Infineon in 2023), which focused on secure distance measurement and proximity-based access control, and of Futurae, a company focusing on usable on-line authentication. In 2016 he received an ERC Consolidator Grant for a project dedicated to securing positioning in wireless networks (www.securepositioning.com). He is a fellow of the ACM and of the IEEE.