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Metasurface-enabled smart wireless attacks at the physical layer

Nature Electronics volume 6, pages 610–618 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

In current wireless communication systems, sophisticated attack strategies at the physical layer—the electromagnetic wave signals carrying the information—leave traces in the physical environment, which mean such attacks are typically detectable. This may not be the case for future—sixth generation and beyond—wireless networks, whose current vision relies on the concept of smart radio environments, which use metasurfaces to manipulate wave signals in unconventional ways. Here we report metasurface-enabled smart wireless attacks at the physical layer. We illustrate both passive and active operational modes. In the passive mode, an attacker is capable of eavesdropping on the wireless information transfer of a target by controlling the programmable metasurface, without actively radiating any signal. In the active mode, an attacker can eavesdrop as well as falsify the wireless communications by sending deceptive information to the target. In both operational modes, the detectability of the attacker can be minimized. As a proof of concept, we create an attacker prototype working in the Wi-Fi band at around 2.4 GHz, and demonstrate its ability to hack wireless data streams. Our results highlight potential security threats for next-generation wireless networks, and emphasize the need to develop suitable mitigation strategies and specific security protocols at an early stage.

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Fig. 1: Conceptual illustration of the metasurface-enabled smart wireless attack.
Fig. 2: System configurations of metasurface-enabled smart wireless attacks.
Fig. 3: Selected experimental results on passive attacks.
Fig. 4: Selected experimental results on the active attacks.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The code that supports the findings of this study is available upon reasonable request from L.L.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under grant nos. 2021YFA1401002, 2017YFA0700201, 2017YFA0700202 and 2017YFA0700203. T.J.C. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant no. 62288101.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Menglin Wei, Hanting Zhao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, School of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Menglin Wei, Hanting Zhao & Lianlin Li

  2. Department of Engineering, University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy

    Vincenzo Galdi

  3. State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, Nanjing, China

    Tie Jun Cui

  4. Pazhou Laboratory, Guangzhou, China

    Tie Jun Cui

Authors
  1. Menglin Wei
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  2. Hanting Zhao
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  3. Vincenzo Galdi
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  4. Lianlin Li
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  5. Tie Jun Cui
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Contributions

L.L., T.J.C. and V.G. conceived the idea and wrote the manuscript. M.W. and H.Z. designed and developed the system and conducted the experiments. All authors participated in the data analysis and interpretation, and read the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Vincenzo Galdi, Lianlin Li or Tie Jun Cui.

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Nature Electronics thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–4, Figs. 1 and 2 and Table 1.

Supplementary Video 1

Video recording of the experimental results of a metasurface-enabled active wireless attack.

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Wei, M., Zhao, H., Galdi, V. et al. Metasurface-enabled smart wireless attacks at the physical layer. Nat Electron 6, 610–618 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-023-01011-0

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