Network layer attacks and countermeasures in cognitive radio networks: A survey

Spectrum scarcity is the principal motivation behind the development of cognitive radio. This technology introduces new functionalities at the physical, medium access control, and network layers of the TCP/IP protocol stack. These functionalities can be subject to new security threats. Most of the existing works in cognitive radio focused on the security issues in both the physical and medium access control layers. However, threats related to the network layer have not been studied despite its importance in establishing communication between different users in cognitive radio networks. In this paper, we classify and give an overview of attacks that target the network layer functionalities of cognitive radio networks. We discuss the existing detection techniques and countermeasures and highlight the main security challenges for such networks.