QPADL: Post-Quantum Private Spectrum Access with Verified Location and DoS Resilience

2025-10-03

AI Summary

Spectrum Access Systems (SAS) face multifaceted security challenges, including location privacy leakage, lack of anonymity, location spoofing, quantum threats, and susceptibility to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. To address these, we propose the first post-quantum (PQ)-secure SAS framework, integrating customized private information retrieval (PIR), PQ-secured Tor-based anonymous routing, PQ digital signatures, and a lightweight client puzzle. We further enhance scalability via GPU acceleration and rate-limiting mechanisms. Our framework simultaneously guarantees strong location privacy, provable anonymity, verifiable location authenticity, and DoS resilience—while significantly improving throughput and response latency under high-concurrency workloads. Formal security proofs establish cryptographic robustness against quantum adversaries and standard threat models; extensive large-scale performance evaluations confirm practical feasibility, efficiency, and excellent scalability.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Scheduling under Uncertainty
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search
• Application Domains: Security

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Location- and context-aware Web and WoT applications and services
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Efficiency and scalability of Web search engines

Abstract

With advances in wireless communication and growing spectrum scarcity, Spectrum Access Systems (SASs) offer an opportunistic solution but face significant security challenges. Regulations require disclosure of location coordinates and transmission details, exposing user privacy and anonymity during spectrum queries, while the database operations themselves permit Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. As location-based services, SAS is also vulnerable to compromised or malicious users conducting spoofing attacks. These threats are further amplified given the quantum computing advancements. Thus, we propose QPADL, the first post-quantum (PQ) secure framework that simultaneously ensures privacy, anonymity, location verification, and DoS resilience while maintaining efficiency for large-scale spectrum access systems. QPADL introduces SAS-tailored private information retrieval for location privacy, a PQ-variant of Tor for anonymity, and employs advanced signature constructions for location verification alongside client puzzle protocols and rate-limiting technique for DoS defense. We formally assess its security and conduct a comprehensive performance evaluation, incorporating GPU parallelization and optimization strategies to demonstrate practicality and scalability.

Problem

• Ensures privacy and anonymity in spectrum access systems
• Provides location verification against spoofing attacks
• Achieves DoS resilience with post-quantum security

Innovation

• Post-quantum private information retrieval for location privacy
• PQ-variant of Tor system for user anonymity
• Advanced signatures with client puzzles for verification