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Can exponential back-off be abused to "knock off" a station off a network?

Çağlar Arlı      -    25 Views

Can exponential back-off be abused to "knock off" a station off a network?

In my Cryptography & Network Security course, my professor mentioned that you can "knock off" a station of a network by abusing the timings of the exponential off algorithm used in CSMA/CD and CSMA/CA. He explains that the attack is carried out by an attacker who knows when the transmitting station (the victim) will try to re transmit frames that were not delivered due to collision.

When I searched for implementation method however, I found that it is impossible to know the time the frame will be retransmitted because the victim does not wait for an EXACT amount of time, instead, it waits for a random amount of time (as far as I understand between 0 and whatever number the exponential backoff algorithm produces).

This makes the attack near impossible to carry out. I am not sure if I am missing something though. Clarification would be great.