Wireless Backdoor Attack and Defense for Semantic Communications over Multiple Access Channel
Score
55Why selected
This paper proposes novel selective over-the-air backdoor attack and trigger-aware defense, making important contributions to semantic communication security, but experimental scale and generalizability need further verification, overall score 80.
AI commentary
「This work reveals new security threats in multi-user shared-access semantic communications and provides effective defenses, which is significant for ensuring the security of future semantic communication systems.」
Quick overview
This paper studies new security vulnerabilities in multi-user shared-access wireless networks for semantic communications. For a scenario where two transmitters communicate with a common receiver over a multiple access channel, a selective over-the-air backdoor attack is proposed: the adversary injects a low-power trigger waveform into the shared received signal during training, and by transmitting the trigger again during testing, selectively manipulates the semantic inference of one transmitter while minimally affecting the other. A trigger-aware defense mechanism is also developed to preserve correct semantic labels under trigger-contaminated observations. Experiments demonstrate both the effectiveness of the attack and the feasibility of the defense.
- Proposes a selective over-the-air backdoor attack for semantic communications over multiple access channel
- Attack injects low-power trigger waveform during training and selectively manipulates single-user semantic inference during testing
- Develops a trigger-aware defense mechanism to preserve correct semantic labels under trigger contamination
- Experiments verify attack threat and defense effectiveness
Full text
Computer Science > Networking and Internet Architecture
arXiv:2606.30595v1 (cs) [Submitted on 29 Jun 2026]Title:Wireless Backdoor Attack and Defense for Semantic Communications over Multiple Access Channel
Authors:Yalin E. Sagduyu, Tugba Erpek, Aylin Yener, Sennur Ulukus View a PDF of the paper titled Wireless Backdoor Attack and Defense for Semantic Communications over Multiple Access Channel, by Yalin E. Sagduyu and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental)Abstract:Semantic communication (SemCom) aims to preserve semantic meaning and task-oriented information beyond conventional message recovery over wireless channels. The adoption of SemCom in shared-access wireless networks introduces new vulnerabilities for multi-user semantic inference. This paper considers a SemCom system for two transmitters communicating with a common receiver over a multiple access channel. Each transmitter maps source information into latent semantic representations, while the receiver jointly reconstructs and classifies the semantic information for both transmitters. A selective over-the-air backdoor (Trojan) attack is presented in which an adversary transmits a low-power trigger waveform over the air and injects it into the shared received signal during training. By transmitting the trigger again during testing, this stealthy, low-power attack selectively manipulates the semantic inference for one transmitter while minimally affecting the inference of the other transmitter. To mitigate this vulnerability, a trigger-aware defense mechanism is developed to preserve correct semantic labels under trigger-contaminated wireless observations. The results demonstrate both the vulnerability of shared-access SemCom systems to selective over-the-air backdoor attacks and the effectiveness of trigger-aware robust training for semantic protection.
| Subjects: | Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Information Theory (cs.IT); Machine Learning (cs.LG); Signal Processing (eess.SP) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2606.30595 [cs.NI] |
| (or arXiv:2606.30595v1 [cs.NI] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.30595 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite |
Submission history
From: Tugba Erpek [view email][v1] Mon, 29 Jun 2026 17:36:09 UTC (200 KB)
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