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Please be aware that this content contains descriptions of violence that may be distressing to some viewers.The cognitive radio enabled IEEE 802.22 wireless regional area network (WRAN) is designed to opportunistically utilize the unused or under-utilized TV bands. However, due to the open nature of cognitive radio networks and lack of proactive security protocols, the IEEE 802.22 networks are vulnerable to various denial-of-service (DoS) threats. In this paper, we study coordinated DoS attacks on IEEE 802.22 networks from the malicious users' perspective. We consider both one-stage and a multi-stage cases of the problem. In the one-stage scenario, we formulate a cooperative game among the malicious nodes and derive the optimal decision strategy for the them. In the multi-stage case, we propose a discrete-time Markov chain model for the dynamic behavior of both malicious nodes and the 802.22 secondary networks. Simulation and numerical results demonstrate that in the one-stage case, the coordinated attack achieves 10-15% improvement compared to the non-cooperative attack from the perspective of malicious nodes, and, in the multi-stage case, there exists an optimal number of malicious nodes that maximize the net payoff under the steady state.
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