Image sensors shielded from electromagnetic attack using black pixels
Lightweight Detection of Electromagnetic Signal Injection Attacks on Image Sensors
Cryptography and Security
Summary
Electromagnetic attacks can trick cameras by messing with their signals, which can cause problems for smart systems that rely on images. The authors found a way to spot these attacks by looking at special pixels called optically black pixels that don’t normally capture light but can detect interference. Their method spots attacks very accurately without needing extra hardware or much computing power. This makes cameras safer from these tricky signal attacks in a simple and practical way.
Electromagnetic signal injection attackImage sensorPixel manipulationOptically black pixelAI model securityReceiver operating characteristic curveEqual error rateElectromagnetic interferenceImage sensor defense
Authors
Youqian Zhang, Chunxi Yang, Eugene Yujun Fu, Sze Yiu Chau, Haibo Hu, Xiapu Luo
Abstract
Electromagnetic signal injection attacks (ESIA) pose a growing threat to image sensors, which are increasingly used in different intelligent systems. By emitting electromagnetic interference, adversaries can manipulate pixel values, potentially misleading downstream artificial intelligence (AI) models and causing unsafe decisions in these systems. We present a lightweight detection method that leverages optically black pixels, which are non-exposed pixels already present in many modern image sensors, to identify the attacks. Our detection approach achieves an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC-AUC) of up to 99.6\% and an Equal Error Rate (EER) as low as 0.027 across diverse attack conditions. Our method requires minimal computational overhead and no hardware modifications, making it a practical and effective defense for securing vision-based systems against ESIA.