Practical Attacks on AFC Clients in Wi-Fi Access Points

The Automated Frequency Coordination (AFC) system enables secure spectrum sharing between Standard Power Wi-Fi APs and 6 GHz incumbents. However, compromised AFC components risk causing harmful interference. In this work, we demonstrate the first practical attack against commercial Wi-Fi APs by impersonating an AFC server to inject forged availableSpectrumInquiryResponse messages. By exploiting flawed client-side implementations, we successfully launch targeted interference and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks within protected frequencies. Our findings underscore the critical need for a more rigorous and prescriptive AFC specification.

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