"Denial of Sleep" Anti-Sensor Attacks

From a private mailing list I’m on (reprinted with the permission of the poster, due to mailing list rules), Ross-Stapleton Gray wrote:

I’m working up a proposal to DARPA, on a theme of anti-sensor R&D, i.e., a complement to what they’ve funded under the Network Embedded Systems Technology (NEST). In a nutshell, the idea is that because we can expect ad hoc, wireless sensor networking to be widely available (especially because of how important commercial markets are to the defense contractors… stuff that is “Star Wars”-grade high-tech today will be scattered all over Singaporean loading docks tomorrow), the U.S. will eventually be confronting same from technologically-advanced adversaries, and ought to have an understanding of how to best counter them, from the obvious (jamming, saturating the area with dumb bombs, etc.) to the exotic (hunter-killer bots to seek out and capture wireless motes for exploitation, etc.). (There’s a paper that was just given at the security conference at West Point, on “denial of sleep” attacks on sensor networks, e.g., causing so many events to monitor that low-power sensors exhaust their batteries.) [It’s near the bottom, Brownfield, et al… they’re at Virginia Tech, and have some previous papers re mobile device battery issues & attacks.]

I’m quoting this both because I know Ross is looking for kindred spirits exploring the future of the sensor space, but also because I love the “Denial of Sleep” meme. It also highlights an interesting emerging trend: the unexpected significance of power in many future technology contexts.