A Game of Replay Attack With an Age of Information Perspective

Wireless communication links for real-time monitoring and control are increasingly exposed to subtle yet harmful threats such as replay attacks. Unlike jamming or denial-of-service, replayed packets can pass standard integrity checks and distort freshness of information. This letter analyzes such attacks from an age of information (AoI) perspective, focusing on their impact on wireless update flows and the resulting link layer performance over vulnerable radio channels. We model the transmitter-attacker interaction through a continuous-time Markov chain, capturing how replayed packets alter the AoI evolution. A two-stage game is formulated, in which the transmitter adapts its wireless update rate, while the adversary tunes the replay frequency and staleness to remain stealthy. Closed-form equilibria are derived, yielding design guidelines for adaptive sensing and medium access adaptation in wireless links under stealthy replay. Results highlight how the excess AoI penalty can be interpreted as a virtual delay, and mitigated through rate adaptation at medium-access level.