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Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems traditionally presuppose that sensing and communication (S&C) channels remain approximately constant during their coherence time. However, a “DISCO” reconfigurable intelligent surface (DRIS), i.e., an illegitimate RIS with random, time-varying reflection properties that acts like a “disco ball,” introduces a paradigm shift that enables active channel aging more rapidly during the channel coherence time. In this letter, we investigate the impact of DISCO jamming attacks launched by a DRIS-based fully-passive jammer (FPJ) on an ISAC system. Specifically, an ISAC problem formulation and a corresponding waveform optimization are presented in which the ISAC waveform design considers the trade-off between the S&C performance and is formulated as a Pareto optimization problem. Moreover, a theoretical analysis is conducted to quantify the impact of DISCO jamming attacks. Numerical results are presented to evaluate the S&C performance under DISCO jamming attacks and to validate the derived theoretical analysis.
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This content will become publicly available on June 29, 2026
Security and Privacy of Integrated Sensing and Communication Systems
Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is considered an emerging technology for 6th-generation (6G) wireless and mobile networks. It is expected to enable a wide variety of vertical applications, ranging from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) detection for critical infrastructure protection to physiological sensing for mobile healthcare. Despite its significant socioeconomic benefits, ISAC technology also raises unique challenges in system security and user privacy. Being aware of the security and privacy challenges, understanding the trade-off between security and communication performance, and exploring potential countermeasures in practical systems are critical to a wide adoption of this technology in various application scenarios. This talk will discuss various security and privacy threats in emerging ISAC systems with a focus on communication-centric ISAC systems, that is, using the cellular or WiFi infrastructure for sensing. We will then examine potential mechanisms to secure ISAC systems and protect user privacy at the physical and data layers under different sensing modes. At the wireless physical (PHY) layer, an ISAC system is subject to both passive and active attacks, such as unauthorized passive sensing, unauthorized active sensing, signal spoofing, and jamming. Potential countermeasures include wireless channel/radio frequency (RF) environment obfuscation, waveform randomization, anti-jamming communication, and spectrum/RF monitoring. At the data layer, user privacy could be compromised during data collection, sharing, storage, and usage. For sensing systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI), user privacy could also be compromised during the model training and inference stages. An attacker could falsify the sensing data to achieve a malicious goal. Potential countermeasures include the application of privacy enhancing technologies (PETs), such as data anonymization, differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, trusted execution, and data synthesis.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2318796
- PAR ID:
- 10621642
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 9798400715310
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 1
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Arlington VA USA
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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