Adversarial Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Against Physical Layer Key Generation

Wei, Zhuangkun; Li, Bin; Guo, Weisi

Abstract

The development of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) has recently advanced the research of physical layer security (PLS). Beneficial impacts of RIS include but are not limited to offering a new degree-of-freedom (DoF) for key-less PLS optimization, and increasing channel randomness for physical layer secret key generation (PL-SKG). However, there is a lack of research studying how adversarial RIS can be used to attack and obtain legitimate secret keys generated by PL-SKG. In this work, we show an Eve-controlled adversarial RIS (Eve-RIS), by inserting into the legitimate channel a random and reciprocal channel, can partially reconstruct the secret keys from the legitimate PL-SKG process. To operationalize this concept, we design Eve-RIS schemes against two PL-SKG techniques used: (i) the CSI-based PL-SKG, and (ii) the two-way cross multiplication based PL-SKG. The channel probing at Eve-RIS is realized by compressed sensing designs with a small number of radio-frequency (RF) chains. Then, the optimal RIS phase is obtained by maximizing the Eve-RIS inserted deceiving channel. Our analysis and results show that even with a passive RIS, our proposed Eve-RIS can achieve a high key match rate with legitimate users, and is resistant to most of the current defensive approaches. This means the novel Eve-RIS provides a new eavesdropping threat on PL-SKG, which can spur new research areas to counter adversarial RIS attacks.

Citation

Wei, Z., Li, B., & Guo, W. (2023). Adversarial Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Against Physical Layer Key Generation. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 18, 2368-2381. https://doi.org/10.1109/tifs.2023.3266705

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 7, 2023
• Publication Date: Apr 12, 2023
• Deposit Date: Feb 12, 2025
• Journal: IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
• Print ISSN: 1556-6013
• Electronic ISSN: 1556-6021
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 18
• Pages: 2368-2381
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/tifs.2023.3266705
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3479193
• Other Repo URL: https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/19564