Communication and Sensing: PHY Layer Threats to Security and Privacy for IoT Systems, and Possible Countermeasures

Recent advances in signal processing and AI-based inference enable the exploitation of communication signals to collect information on devices, people, actions and the environment in general, i.e., to perform Integrated Sensing And Communication (ISAC). This possibility opens new and exciting opportunities for IoT systems, but at the same time poses unprecedented threats to security and privacy of data, devices, and systems. In fact, ISAC operates at the PHY and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers, where it is impossible to protect the information with standard encryption techniques, or with any other purely digital methodologies. The work we present analyzes, within the framework of IoT and distributed, pervasive communication systems, the threats to security and privacy posed by ISAC and how they do intertwine at the PHY layer. Next, possible countermeasures are presented and discussed, with proper architectural choices and tradeoffs to implement them, as well as solutions and protocols to preserve the potential benefits of ISAC while ensuring data protection and users’ privacy.