Passive Eavesdropper Research Articles

Secure Partially Collaborative Codes

We study secrecy in distributed storage systems (DSS) in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. In particular, we are interested in the repair model called partially collaborative repair, in which <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$t$ </tex-math></inline-formula> failures are repaired collaboratively and simultaneously, and each of these <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$t$ </tex-math></inline-formula> failed nodes is only allowed to exchange data with a subset of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$t-s$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1 \leq s \leq t$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ) nodes. The eavesdropper is assumed to be able to gain access to the data stored in a subset of the storage nodes, and possibly also, to the data downloaded during repair of some nodes. The upper bound on the secrecy capacity of this setting was studied by Liu and Oggier. In this letter, we propose two code constructions, namely secure minimum storage partially collaborative repair (SMSPCR) codes and secure minimum bandwidth partially collaborative repair (SMBPCR) codes, that achieve the existing upper bounds at two extreme points, which implies that both codes are optimal in the sense of achieving the secrecy capacity.

Robust security transmission design for multi-user peer-to-peer wireless relay networks

In this article, we studied the robust security transmission design for multi-user peer-to-peer relay networks, where all users demand secure communication and the eavesdropper is passive. Although the previous researches have designed the physical-layer security schemes under perfect channel state information, this study focuses on investigating the robust transmission design in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. Our goal is to maximize the artificial noise power to confuse the passive eavesdropper and subject to the worst-case signal-to-interference-noise-ratio constraints for all users under a bounded spherical region for the norm of the channel state information error vector from the relays to the destinations and the individual power constraints of all relay nodes. Mathematically, the original robust problem is difficult to solve due to its non-linearity and non-convexity. We propose to adopt S-Procedure and rank relaxation techniques to convert it to a semidefinite programming convex problem. The numerical results show the advantage of the proposed robust method.

Intelligent Passive Eavesdropping in Massive MIMO-OFDM Systems via Reinforcement Learning

Massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) with narrow beam enhances the confidentiality of communication between base station and users, but also increases the difficulty for legal eavesdropping. In this letter, we study the passive eavesdropping scheme in the massive MIMO-OFDM systems by utilizing mobility of the monitor. Our objective is to maximize the average eavesdropping rate under the constraints of energy supply, moving direction and speed by jointly optimizing the receiving beamformers and moving trajectory. Due to the unknown environment knowledge and location of suspicious user, we propose the solution based on concatenated deep Q-network (DQN) to obtain the optimal solution. Simulation results verify the validity of the proposed method.

Artificial Noise Aided Secure Communications for Cooperative NOMA Networks

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been envisioned as a promising multiple access technique to improve spectral efficiency and provide massive connectivity in future wireless networks. However, the inherited security issues with NOMA should be carefully addressed to further exploit its potential benefits in NOMA enabled wireless networks. As such, we consider a cooperative NOMA network, where a source uses the NOMA to simultaneously communicate with a multi-antenna near-user and a far-user. While directly communicating with the near-user, the source employs multiple full-duplex (FD) decode-and forward (DF) relays to establish communication with the far-user in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. To address the eavesdropping in this cooperative NOMA network, we propose a new two-phase FD-based artificial noise (AN) scheme with different relay selection techniques. In the first phase, the selected FD relay emits AN to confuse the eavesdropper while receiving the superimposed signal from the source. In the second phase, the selected relay performs exclusive OR (XOR) operation on both the message intended to the far-user and the AN before broadcasting the resulting mixed signal. By utilizing null-space beamforming, self-interference cancellation techniques and DF-XOR cooperative protocol, the AN in the proposed scheme can be efficiently eliminated at the near-user and far-user as well as at the selected relay. However, the AN cannot be suppressed at the eavesdropper which serves the purpose of AN through degrading the decoding capability of the eavesdropper. We evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of security-reliability trade-off (SRT). For the AN-aided scheme with max-min and partial relay selection techniques, we theoretically derive the exact and asymptotic closed-form expressions of the outage probability and intercept probability. Numerical results have been provided to validate the derivations. In addition, the results reveal that the SRT of the near-user and far-user can be improved by increasing the number of antennas at the near-user and the number of relays.

RIS‐assisted secure UAV communications with resource allocation and cooperative jamming

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely used in wireless communication networks due to their rapid deployment and high mobility. However, in practical scenarios, the existence of obstacles and eavesdroppers will seriously interfere with the communication quality of the UAV network and produce a security risk. Thus, this paper combines reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) technology with UAVs to build a secure UAV communication network. Normally, a rotary-wing UAV (labeled as UAV-S) acting as a base station sends information signals to a legitimate user on the ground with RIS equipment. However, there is a passive eavesdropper on the ground who can steal the information. Therefore, a friendly UAV jammer (labeled as UAV-J) with a fixed location is introduced to send jamming signals to confuse the eavesdropper. The goal of this paper is to maximize the average secrecy rate of the communication network by jointly optimizing the flight trajectory, transmit power of the UAV-S and UAV-J, and phase shifter of the RIS. Since the constructed problem is highly nonconvex, an alternating optimization algorithm based on successive convex approximation techniques is proposed to solve the problem. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve a higher secrecy rate in comparison with other schemes.

Joint pilot design and beamforming optimization in massive MIMO surveillance systems

This paper proposes a novel joint channel estimation and beamforming scheme for the massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) frequency-division duplexing (FDD) wireless legitimate surveillance system. With the proposed scheme, the monitor with the full duplex capability realizes the proactive eavesdropping of the suspicious link by leveraging the pilot attack approach. Specifically, exploiting the effective eavesdropping rate and the mean square error as performance metrics and setting a total power budget at the training and transmission phases, while guaranteeing the information from suspicious source can be successfully decode, joint pilot design, power allocation and beamforming strategy are formulated as optimization problems for the two objective functions: MSE and effective eavesdropping rate. A closed-form expression of the optimal pilot with the limited length can be obtained via the channel correlation. The optimal power problem at the training phase can be solved by a simple bisection method. Then, based on the obtained imperfect estimated channel, the jamming beamforming at monitor optimization algorithm is proposed by utilizing the convex Semidefinite Programming approach to maximize the effective eavesdropping rate. Numerical results show that the proposed joint pilot design, power allocation and beamforming optimization scheme can improve the surveillance performance of the legitimate monitor as compared to the existing passive eavesdropping and jamming-assisted eavesdropping.

Simple and loss-tolerant free-space quantum key distribution using a squeezed laser

We consider a continuous-variable (CV) quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol over free-space channels, which is simpler and more robust than typical CV QKD protocols. It uses a bright laser, squeezed and modulated in the amplitude quadrature, and self-homodyne detection. We consider a scenario, where the line of sight is classically monitored to detect active eavesdroppers, so that we can assume a passive eavesdropper. Under this assumption, we analyze security of the QKD protocol in the composable finite-size regime. Proper modulation of the squeezed laser to the shot-noise level can completely eliminate information leakage to the eavesdropper and also eliminate the turbulence-induced noise of the channel in the amplitude quadrature. Under these conditions, estimation of the eavesdropper's information is no longer required. The protocol is extremely robust to modulation noise and highly loss-tolerant, which makes it a promising candidate for satellite-based continuous-variable quantum communication.

User cooperation for IRS-aided secure MIMO systems

An intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is proposed to enhance the physical layer security in the Rician fading channel wherein the angular direction of the eavesdropper (ED) is aligned with a legitimate user. A two-phase communication system under active attacks and passive eavesdropping is considered in this scenario. The base station avoids direct transmission to the attacked user in the first phase, whereas other users cooperate in forwarding signals to the attacked user in the second phase, with the help of IRS and energy harvesting technology. Under the occurrence of active attacks, an outage-constrained beamforming design problem is investigated under the statistical cascaded channel error model, which is solved by using the Bernstein-type inequality. An average secrecy rate maximization problem for the passive eavesdropping is formulated, which is then addressed by a low-complexity algorithm. The numerical results of this study reveal that the negative effect of the ED's channel error is larger than that of the legitimate user.

Beamforming and Jamming Optimization for IRS-Aided Secure NOMA Networks

The integration of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) and multiple access provides a promising solution to improved coverage and massive connections at low cost. However, securing IRS-aided networks remains a challenge since the potential eavesdropper also has access to an additional IRS reflection link, especially when the eavesdropping channel state information is unknown. In this paper, we propose an IRS-assisted non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme to achieve secure communication via artificial jamming, where the multi-antenna base station sends the NOMA and jamming signals together to the legitimate users with the assistance of IRS, in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. The sum rate of legitimate users is maximized by optimizing the transmit beamforming, the jamming vector and the IRS reflecting vector, satisfying the quality of service requirement, the IRS reflecting constraint and the successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoding condition. In addition, the received jamming power is adapted at the highest level at all legitimate users for successful cancellation via SIC. To tackle this non-convex optimization problem, we first decompose it into two subproblems, and then each subproblem is converted into a convex one using successive convex approximation. An alternate optimization algorithm is proposed to solve them iteratively. Numerical results show that the secure transmission in the proposed IRS-NOMA scheme can be effectively guaranteed with the assistance of artificial jamming.

Artificial-Noise-Aided Space–Time Line Code for Enhancing Physical Layer Security of Multiuser MIMO Downlink Transmission

We consider secure downlink multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) communications between a transmitter and multiple users when there exists a passive eavesdropper. A downlink main channel between the transmitter and a user is estimated through uplink pilot symbols in a time-division duplex mode. On the other hand, to hinder an eavesdropper from estimating the eavesdropper channel between the transmitter and the eavesdropper, the transmitter does not send any pilot symbols. The main channel is hence available at the transmitter only, while the eavesdropper channel is unavailable at any node. Assuming these channel state information (CSI) conditions, we propose a MIMO transmission method using space–time line code (STLC) with artificial noise (AN) for enhancing the physical layer security. The STLC enables noncoherent detection at the receiver, i.e., a user, without CSI and achieves full spatial diversity. We derive the lower bound of the secrecy sum rate for the proposed STLC transmission method without AN, with AN, and with AN and imperfect CSI. Moreover, numerical results verify that the proposed STLC scheme outperforms the conventional eigen-beamforming and the precoding space-time block code in terms of secrecy sum rate regardless of the signal-to-noise ratio, the number of transmit antennas, and the CSI uncertainty.

Secrecy Energy Efficiency Maximization in UAV-Enabled Wireless Sensor Networks Without Eavesdropper’s CSI

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are anticipated to be a potential data collection solution for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The main challenges of integrating UAVs in WSNs are security threats and UAV’s onboard energy limitation. To cope with these two challenges, this article examines the secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) maximization problem in UAV-enabled WSN. Specifically, a full-duplex (FD) UAV gathers confidential information from ground sensor nodes (SNs) in the uplink while sending jamming signals to confound a ground eavesdropper (Eve) in the downlink. Considering a passive eavesdropping scenario lacking Eve’s instantaneous channel state information (CSI), the resulting problem is subject to the constraints of connection outage probability (COP), secrecy outage probability (SOP), securely collected bits, and flight trajectory. To tackle the intractable nonconvex problem, we first derive the optimal codeword rate and redundancy rate in closed-form expressions and then develop a low-complexity algorithm using the block coordinate descent (BCD) approach to alternatively optimize the SN scheduling, SN transmit power, UAV transmit power, and UAV trajectory. Simulation results verify the performance gains of the proposed scheme compared with the benchmark schemes. In particular, the proposed scheme achieves nearly the same secrecy rate gains at a lower UAV’s energy consumption cost than the sum secrecy rate maximization (SSRM) baseline. Moreover, it is revealed that trajectory optimization of the proposed scheme plays a crucial role in improving SEE performance compared with the circle trajectory (CT) baseline.

Multi-beam symbol-level secure transmission against hybrid eavesdropping

In this paper, we consider a physical layer security (PLS) problem for a hybrid wiretapping wireless system in millimeter-wave transmission, where the active eavesdropper and passive eavesdropper (Eve) may coexist to intercept the confidential messages and emit jamming signals. To achieve secure and reliable transmission, we propose a switched phased-array directional modulation (DM) scheme that employs multi-beam symbol-level precoding with aided artificial noise (AN) technique at the transmitter, and array reception at legitimate users (LU). Here we consider a more practical case that the information of the eavesdropper (Eve) is unknown by the transmitter. Leveraging DM beamforming, we aim to minimize transmit message power by optimizing the beamforming vector, subject to prescribed symbol-level constraints, thus generating exact/relaxed phases at LU. The remaining transmit power can be utilized to generate AN. Additionally, by means of the minimum variance distortionless response method at the LU, the jamming caused by active Eve can be efficiently eliminated. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme.

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Assisted Secret Key Generation in Quasi-Static Environments

We propose a key generation protocol with the aid of a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to boost secret key rate (SKR) in quasi-static environments. Considering a passive eavesdropper, we derive the closed-form expression of the lower and upper bounds of the SKR. Our findings indicate the SKR is determined by the number of RIS elements, the correlation coefficient, the pilot length and the quality of the reflecting channel. Our protocol fully exploits the randomness from the direct channel and the reflecting channel. Monte Carlo simulations validate the analytical expression of the SKR and demonstrate our protocol outperforms existing work.

Energy-Efficient Secure Short-Packet Transmission in NOMA-Assisted mMTC Networks With Relaying

Massive Machine-Type Communication (mMTC) is proposed by ITU to provide a large scale of connectivity services for billions of machine-type communications devices (MTCDs) via cellular networks. However, MTCDs are generally energy-constrained, security capability limited and short-packet transmission dominated. It has great challenges for massive MTCDs to perform short-packet transmission simultaneously while guaranteeing the confidentiality and energy efficiency of the information transmission. In this paper, we investigate the energy-efficient secure short-packet transmission of Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) assisted mMTC networks, in which MTCDs aim to transmit secrecy messages to the destination base station via trusted relays with a passive eavesdropper present. To realize secure, reliable and energy-efficient transmission, we maximize the secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) by implementing joint relay and power level selection. Furthermore, we formulate a decentralized stateless Q-learning-based multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) algorithm for the dynamic and complex mMTC systems. The simulation results show that adopting the proposed decentralized MARL algorithm and relaying with NOMA can improve the performance of SEE while reducing information exchange overhead.

On Learning-Assisted Content-Based Secure Image Transmission for Delay-Aware Systems With Randomly-Distributed Eavesdroppers

In this paper, a learning-aided content-based image transmission scheme is proposed, where a multi-antenna source wishes to securely deliver an image to a legitimate destination in the presence of randomly-distributed passive eavesdroppers (Eves). We take into account the fact that not all regions of an image have the same importance from the security perspective. Hence, we employ a hybrid method to realize both the error-free data delivery of public regions—containing less-important pixels; and an artificial noise (AN)-aided transmission scheme for securing the confidential packets. To reinforce system’s security, fountain-based packet delivery is also adopted, where the source node encodes images into fountain-like packets prior to sending them over the air. The secrecy is achieved when the legitimate destination correctly receives the entire source packets before Eves obtain the important regions, while conforming to the latency limits of the system. Accordingly, the secrecy performance of our scheme is characterized by deriving a closed-form expression for the quality-of-security (QoSec) violation probability. Moreover, our proposed image delivery scheme leverages a deep neural network (DNN) and learns to maintain optimized transmission parameters, while achieving a low QoSec violation probability. Simulation results are provided to illustrate that our proposed learning-assisted scheme outperforms the state-of-the-arts by achieving considerable gains in terms of security and delay requirement.

Secrecy performance of transmit antenna selection for underlay MIMO cognitive radio relay networks with energy harvesting

In this paper, the secrecy performance in a MIMO cognitive radio (CR) relay network with energy harvesting (EH) and transmit antenna selection/maximal ratio combining (TAS/MRC) is invstigated, where the DF relaying protocol and multiple colluding passive eavesdroppers are considered. To improve the security of wireless transmission, two antenna selection schemes are proposed, namely, the optimal transmit antenna selection (OTAS) scheme and suboptimal transmit antenna selection (STAS) scheme. For the purpose of comparison, the space-time transmission (STT) scheme is introduced as a baseline. The exact and asymptotic closed-form secrecy outage probability (SOP) expressions for OTAS, STAS and STT schemes are derived over Rayleigh fading channels. An extension of the TAS framework to an artificial noise (AN) aided MIMO network is further presented and an AN aided transmit antenna selection (AN-TAS) scheme is proposed, in which the unselected antennas at R are used to emit AN for interfering with Es. Numerical results show that the OTAS and STAS schemes perform better than STT scheme in terms of SOP. Meanwhile, the SOP of AN-TAS scheme is much smaller than that of OTAS, STAS and STT schemes in the high SNR region, indicating the benefit of applying AN in MIMO network.

An Opportunistic Power Control Scheme for Mitigating User Location Tracking Attacks in Cellular Networks

Cellular networks have been successfully evolved over the decades. Especially, Long-Term Evolution (LTE) has been exceedingly successful and the security threats against LTE systems have increased rapidly. Particularly, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">tracking</i> LTE user devices has been shown to be effective as the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">temporary</i> user identifiers (IDs) are easily extracted and used to locate targeted devices by passive eavesdroppers. We notice that naive approaches, such as frequent updates of temporary user IDs, are <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">insufficient</i> to mitigate user-tracking attacks since the new and old temporary IDs for the same user device are easily <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">linkable</i> by adversaries who can measure the wireless channel characteristics between the user device and herself. In this paper, we propose an opportunistic uplink power control scheme to minimize the probability of successful user tracking by an adversary whose location is unknown. We devise the notion of average inference error probability in order to measure the level of users’ location privacy. Moreover, we derive the closed-form expression of the approximated average inference error probability and formulate an optimization problem to maximize the average inference error probability under a constraint of an allowable power budget for each user. Against a passive adversary, our proposed power control scheme effectively degrades an adversary’s inference ability by 50% when 10 users are scheduled in each transmission time slot, which will lead to almost 100% inference error at the adversary over multiple time slots.

On the Physical Layer Security of Untrusted Millimeter Wave Relaying Networks: A Stochastic Geometry Approach

The physical layer security (PLS) of millimeter wave (mmWave) communication systems is investigated, where the secure source-to-destination communication is assisted by an untrusted relay selected from a group of them and there are also several passive eavesdroppers (Eves) in the network. In the considered system model, while the distributions of the untrusted relays and Eves follow a homogeneous Poisson Point Process (PPP). To maximize the instantaneous secrecy rate, a novel joint relay selection and power allocation (JRP) method is developed where the destination and source aim for jamming the reception of both the untrusted relays and passive Eves. New expressions of the optimal power allocation (OPA) are derived for both non-colluding Eves (NCE) and colluding Eves (CE). Subsequently, by considering the impact of potential blockages, new closed-form equations are derived for analyzing the system’s ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) and secrecy outage probability (SOP) for transmission over fading mmWave channels. Finally, numerical examples are provided for demonstrating the superiority of our proposed JRP method over the relevant benchmarks found in the literature. Interestingly, the ESR increases with the density of untrusted relays for both the NCE and CE scenarios, which is a benefit of the improved probability of selecting a relay with a stronger second-hop channel. Furthermore, in the low transmit power regime, employing relatively low mmWave frequencies achieves better ESR, while in the high transmit power regime, high mmWave frequencies provide higher ESR.

Secure Active and Passive Beamforming in IRS-Aided MIMO Systems

In intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, the IRS can be utilized to suppress the information leakage towards malicious terminals. This can lead to significant secrecy gains. This work exploits these gains via a tractable <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">joint</i> design of downlink beamformers and IRS phase-shifts. In this respect, we consider a generic IRS-aided MIMO wiretap setting and invoke fractional programming and alternating optimization to iteratively find the beamformers and phase-shifts that maximize the achievable weighted secrecy sum-rate. Our design is comprised of two low-complexity algorithms. Performance of the proposed algorithms are numerically evaluated and compared to the benchmark. The results reveal that integrating IRSs into MIMO systems not only boosts the secrecy performance, but also improves the robustness against passive eavesdropping.

Secrecy Capacity Analysis of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Based Vehicular Networks

As Vehicular Networks based technologies are in the close proximity of deployment for various wireless applications under proposal worldwide, this research paper proposes secrecy capacity analysis for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) based Vehicular Network. The proposed network model has a fixed infrastructure comprising of source node, destination node incorporated with single antenna and passive eavesdropper forming the scenario. RIS based Vehicular communication links are modelled by Rayleigh fading for source-to RIS link and RIS to destination Vehicle, whereas Eavesdropper channel links are Double-Rayleigh amplitude distribution, induced by double scattering in the channel. For this scenario, we derive the closed-form expressions for the average Secrecy Capacity and Secrecy Outage Probability (SOP) of the considered system. Though, Secrecy Capacity analysis is an excellent performance metric for assessing eavesdropper based system, it has been reported by various research works, this research paper differentiates from other research papers by considering different secrecy rates and different distances of eavesdropper as presented in simulation. Further, to validate the obtained simulation results, theoretical results are also derived for assessing performance of SOP for various secrecy rates which is the highlight of this research paper and it can be used as benchmark for various research works to proceed further.