Metasurface-in-the-Middle Attack: From Theory to Experiment
Metasurface-in-the-Middle Attack: From Theory to Experiment
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DOI：
10.1145/3507657.3528549
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发表时间：
2022-05
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Zhambyl Shaikhanov;Fahid Hassan;H. Guerboukha;D. Mittleman;E. Knightly
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文献类型：
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作者：
Zhambyl Shaikhanov;Fahid Hassan;H. Guerboukha;D. Mittleman;E. Knightly
超表面使电磁波的可控操作成为可能，并已被证明可以以多种不同的方式改善无线通信。在本文中，我们首次定义并实验证明了一种“中间超表面”（metassurface - In - middle， MSITM）攻击。在这种攻击中，对手Eve在Alice和Bob之间的指令传输路径上放置了一个超表面，目标是在不被发现的情况下将部分信号重定向到自己身上。特别是，我们展示了Eve如何设计一个超表面，在超表面的界面处诱导突然的相位变化，以可控地衍射方向链路并建立隐蔽的窃听链路。我们探索了MSITM攻击的理论基础，并证明了一个有效的超表面可以在5分钟内以几美分的成本原型化。我们在太赫兹时域系统中进行了实验验证，并进行了一组空中实验。我们的研究结果表明，MSITM攻击产生了一个严重的漏洞，可以显著降低经验保密能力，同时留下最小的能量足迹，使攻击难以检测。
Metasurfaces enable controllable manipulation of electromagnetic waves and have been shown to improve wireless communications in many diverse ways. In this paper, we define and experimentally demonstrate for the first time a "MetaSurface-in-the-Middle'' (MSITM) attack. In this attack, the adversary Eve places a metasurface in the path of a directive transmission between Alice and Bob and targets to re-direct a portion of the signal towards herself, without being detected. In particular, we show how Eve can design a metasurface that induces abrupt phase changes at the interface of the metasurface to controllably diffract directional links and establish furtive eavesdropping links. We explore the theoretical foundations of the MSITM attack and demonstrate that an effective metasurface can be prototyped in under 5 min at the cost of several cents. We experimentally demonstrate the attack in a THz time-domain system and perform a set of over-the-air experiments. Our results indicate that the MSITM attack yields an acute vulnerability that can significantly reduce empirical secrecy capacity while leaving a minimal energy footprint, making the attack challenging to detect.