Awesome RIS Attacks and Defenses
This repository contains a collection of papers and resources on security and privacy issues related to reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs).
Table of Contents
📃Survey
Application Focus
Security Focus
| Year | Publication | Paper |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | IEEE Internet of Things Journal | RIS-based physical layer security for integrated sensing and communication: A comprehensive survey |
| 2023 | IEEE OJ-COMS | Security and privacy for reconfigurable intelligent surface in 6G: A review of prospective applications and challenges |
| 2025 | Discover Internet of Things | A comprehensive survey on 6G-security: physical connection and service layers |
| 2024 | IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials | Ris-assisted physical layer security in emerging rf and optical wireless communication systems: A comprehensive survey |
| 2024 | IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology | A survey on reconfigurable intelligent surface for physical layer security of next-generation wireless communications |
Tutorials, Standards & Technical Reports
Tutorial
| Year | Publication | Document |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | IEEE Signal Processing Magazine | Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: A Signal Processing Perspective with Wireless Applications |
ETSI ISG RIS Deliverables
Supporting 3GPP and ITU Documents
These documents provide general channel, security, and IMT-2030 baselines; they are not dedicated 3GPP RIS specifications.
| Year | Organization | Document |
|---|---|---|
| Continuously updated | 3GPP | TR 38.901: Study on Channel Model for Frequencies from 0.5 to 100 GHz |
| Continuously updated | 3GPP | TS 33.501: Security Architecture and Procedures for the 5G System |
| 2022 | ITU-R | Report M.2516-0: Future Technology Trends of Terrestrial IMT Systems Towards 2030 and Beyond |
| 2023 | ITU-R | Recommendation M.2160-0: Framework and Overall Objectives of IMT for 2030 and Beyond |
Industry White Papers
| Year | Organization | Document |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | RIS TECH Alliance (RISTA) | Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Technology White Paper |
| 2025 | FuTURE Forum / RISTA | White Paper on Channel Modeling and Simulation for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface |
| 2025 | FuTURE Forum / RISTA | White Paper on Prototyping of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface |
| 2025 | FuTURE Forum / RISTA | White Paper on Potential Standardization Work for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface |
| 2025 | FuTURE Forum / RISTA | 6G Near-Field Technologies White Paper 2.0 |
⚔️Attacks
The attack taxonomy follows the adversary's position relative to the network operator's trust domain. Attacks on RIS systems exploit or compromise a legitimate RIS deployment, whereas attacks leveraging the RIS weaponize an unauthorized RIS or a fully compromised legitimate RIS against the broader wireless system. A paper may appear in both categories when it explicitly supports both deployment models.
Attacks on RIS Systems
| Year | Publication | Target Component | Paper | Code💻 / Demo✅ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | HotMobile '22 | Control Link | Malicious mmWave reconfigurable surface: Eavesdropping through harmonic steering | |
| 2023 | WiSec '23 | Control Link | Wavefront manipulation attack via programmable mmWave metasurfaces: from theory to experiments | |
| 2022 | ASIA CCS '22 | Control Link | Mirror, mirror on the wall: Wireless environment reconfiguration attacks based on fast software-controlled surfaces | |
| 2022 | IEEE ISIT 2022 | RIS Controller | Controller manipulation attack on reconfigurable intelligent surface aided wireless communication | |
| 2025 | IEEE CSCN 2025 | RIS Hardware | MALRIS: Malicious Hardware in RIS-Assisted Wireless Communications | |
| 2020 | IEEE Wireless Communications Letters | RIS Surface | IRS-based wireless jamming attacks: When jammers can attack without power | |
| 2025 | NDSS 2025 | RIS Surface | Spatial-domain wireless jamming with reconfigurable intelligent surfaces |
Attacks Leveraging the RIS
🛡️Defenses
The defense taxonomy is determined by the role of the RIS in the protected architecture. Securing RIS-assisted systems assumes that a legitimate RIS is already part of the system. Countermeasures against malicious RISs address attacks in which the adversary controls an unauthorized or compromised RIS. RIS as a defensive tool covers systems that introduce an additional friendly RIS specifically for protection. A paper may appear in more than one category if it evaluates multiple architectures.
Securing RIS-Assisted Systems
Countermeasures Against Malicious RISs
Early Detection of Unauthorized RIS
| Year | Publication | Paper | Code💻 / Demo✅ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Optics Express | Detection and mapping of specular surfaces using multibounce lidar returns | |
| 2025 | ICC 2025 | On the Detection of Non-Cooperative RISs: Scan B-Testing via Deep Support Vector Data Description | |
| 2025 | arXiv | Analysis and Detection of RIS-based Spoofing in Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) | |
| 2022 | IEEE Pervasive Computing | See no evil: Discovering covert surveillance devices using thermal imaging | |
| 2025 | IEEE TIFS | MRIS-SAD: Malicious RIS Spoofing Attack Detection Based on Hybrid Deep Autoencoder |
System-level Defenses
| Year | Publication | Paper | Code💻 / Demo✅ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | IEEE TWC | Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided Pilot Contamination Attack and Its Countermeasure | |
| 2024 | IEEE SPAWC 2024 | Benign and Malicious Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces in MISO Wiretap Channels | |
| 2023 | IEEE Wireless Communications Letters | A Countermeasure Against RIS Jamming Attack in Physical-Layer Key Generation | |
| 2023 | IEEE OJ-COMS | Counteracting eavesdropper attacks through reconfigurable intelligent surfaces: A new threat model and secrecy rate optimization | |
| 2024 | IEEE Wireless Communications Letters | Malicious RIS Versus Massive MIMO: Securing Multiple Access Against RIS-Based Jamming Attacks |
RIS as a Defensive Tool
Physical-Layer Authentication
| Year | Publication | Threat Type | Paper | Code💻 / Demo✅ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | IEEE TWC | Spoofing | RIS-Assisted Wireless Link Signatures for Specific Emitter Identification | |
| 2025 | IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics | Spoofing | Efficient Gaussian Process Classification-Based Physical-Layer Authentication with Configurable Fingerprints for 6G-Enabled IoT | |
| 2024 | IEEE TIFS | Spoofing | Analysis of Challenge-Response Authentication with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces | |
| 2025 | IEEE Internet of Things Journal | Spoofing & Eavesdropping | A Robust Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Aided Physical Layer Authentication Scheme Under Confidentiality Constraints | |
| 2025 | IEEE Internet of Things Journal | Spoofing | Voltage Profile-Driven Physical Layer Authentication for RIS-Aided Backscattering Tag-to-Tag Networks |
🛠️Tools
| Year | Publication / Organization | Resources |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Mathworks | Introduction to Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) |
| 2024 | Mathworks | Radar Sensing with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) |
| 2024 | Mathworks | Model Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces with CDL Channels |
| 2019 | ASU Wireless Intelligence Lab | DeepMIMO |
| 2020 | Koç University CoreLab | SimRIS Channel Simulator v2.0 |
| 2022 | NVIDIA | Sionna RT v0.19.2 (RIS-supported release) |
| 2024 | InterDigital | NeoRadium |
| 2023 | ISAP 2023 | Open Source RIS |
| 2024 | University of Trento | CoopeRIS: RIS Simulation for Cooperative Driving |
| 2026 | Telefónica Scientific Research | DDRD: Data-Driven RIS Deployment |
| Continuously updated | GitHub | RIS-Codes-Collection |