Abstract
In many applications that employ wireless sensor networks (WSNs),
robustness of distributed inference against Byzantine
attacks is
important. In this work, distributed inference is considered when
local sensors send M-ary data to the fusion
center. The
optimal Byzantine attack policy is then derived under the assumption
that the Byzantine adversary has the
knowledge of the statistics
of local quantization outputs. Our analysis indicates that the fusion
center can be blinded such
that the detection error is as poor as
a random guess when an adequate fraction of sensors are compromised.