813 Copyright © 2015, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Chapter 31 DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-6571-2.ch031 ABSTRACT Cognitive radio technology is the vision of pervasive wireless communications that improves the spectrum utilization and ofers many social and individual benefts. The objective of the cognitive radio network technology is to use the unutilized spectrum by primary users and fulfll the secondary users’ demands irrespective of time and location (any time and any place). Due to their fexibility, the Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) are vulnerable to numerous threats and security problems that will afect the perfor- mance of the network. Little attention has been given to security aspects in cognitive radio networks. In this chapter, the authors discuss the security issues in cognitive radio networks, and then they present an intensive list of the main known security threats in CRN at various layers and the adverse efects on performance due to such threats, and the current existing paradigms to mitigate such issues and threats. Finally, the authors highlight proposed directions in order to make CRN more authenticated, reliable, and secure. 1. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, there is an unexpected explosion in the demand for wireless network resources. This is due to the intense increase in the number of the emerging services. For wireless computer network, limited bandwidth along with the transmission quality requirements for users, make quality of service (QoS) provisioning a very challenging problem as highlighted by Bhargavaand et al. (2007). To overcome Towards Security Issues and Solutions in Cognitive Radio Networks Saed Alrabaee Concordia University, Canada Mahmoud Khasawneh Concordia University, Canada Anjali Agarwal Concordia University, Canada