A Magnetic Signal Based Device Fingerprinting Scheme in Wireless Charging

Jiachun Li, Yan Meng, Le Zhang, Guoxing Chen, Yuan Tian, Haojin Zhu

Abstract: Wireless charging is widely used to charge smart devices with limited battery capacity. However, it is susceptible to the identity spoofing attack, where adversaries can impersonate malicious devices as legitimate ones to gain unauthorized access and potentially disrupt the wireless charging system (e.g., resulting in incorrect billing, overheating, or even explosions). Device fingerprinting is a classical method for defending against identity spoofing attacks. However, applying existing schemes in wireless charging scenarios has drawbacks such as inconvenience (e.g., requiring specialized devices or user participation) and ineffectiveness (e.g., vulnerability to spoofing). Thus, we design a novel passive, effective, and robust device fingerprinting scheme called MagID for wireless charging systems. The insight of MagID lies in the fact that during wireless charging, the magnetic signal around a device can reflect inherent hardware differences. These differences can be extracted as unique fingerprints for authentication purposes. MagID leverages a novel scheme, SUPER-ARRAY, to precisely measure magnetic data and generate effective fingerprints for authenticating a device's identity before starting charging progress. Experimental results demonstrate that MagID achieves an accuracy rate of 98.14% across various charging devices. We have also tested its performance under different impact factors and verified its compatibility with various wireless charging pads.

External IDs:dblp:journals/tdsc/LiMZCTZ25