Covert Wireless Communication in Presence of a Multi-Antenna Adversary and Delay Constraints

Shahzad, Khurram; Zhou, Xiangyun; Yan, Shihao

doi:10.1109/tvt.2019.2948608

Cited by 64 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…We expect a high covert probability for situations in which Willie cannot correctly detect the model transmission of any device in the network. For this, the cover probability for the device in the FL network needs to be greater than a security requirement (1 − ǫ) [15], where ǫ is the security threshold. This is the CC constraint.…”

Section: ) System Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Securing Federated Learning: A Covert Communication-based Approach

Xie¹,

Kang²,

Niyato³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Federated Learning Networks (FLNs) have been envisaged as a promising paradigm to collaboratively train models among mobile devices without exposing their local privacy data. Due to the need for frequent model updates and communications, FLNs are vulnerable to various attacks (e.g., eavesdropping attacks, inference attacks, poisoning attacks, and backdoor attacks). Balancing privacy protection with efficient distributed model training is a key challenge for FLNs. Existing countermeasures incur high computation costs and are only designed for specific attacks on FLNs. In this paper, we bridge this gap by proposing the Covert Communication-based Federated Learning (CCFL) approach. Based on the emerging communication security technique of covert communication which hides the existence of wireless communication activities, CCFL can degrade attackers' capability of extracting useful information from the FLN training protocol, which is a fundamental step for most existing attacks, and thereby holistically enhances the privacy of FLNs. We experimentally evaluate CCFL extensively under real-world settings in which the FL latency is optimized under given security requirements. Numerical results demonstrate the significant effectiveness of the proposed approach in terms of both training efficiency and communication security.

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Section: ) System Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Securing Federated Learning: A Covert Communication-based Approach

Xie¹,

Kang²,

Niyato³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…The authors in [25] further explored the benefits of both centralized and distributed multi-antenna transmitters on covert communications against randomly located wardens. The authors in a recent work [26] considered a multi-antenna warden scenario, showing that even a slight increase in the antenna number at the warden side can result in a dramatic deterioration in covert throughput.…”

Section: A Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…where n w [i] is the AWGN at W with variance σ 2 w , i.e., n w [i] ∼ CN (0, σ 2 w ). We follow a commonly used assumption in literature on covert communications that W adopts a radiometer to detect the covert communication from T to R [19], [20], [24]- [26]. This is not only because the radiometer is easy to implement and is of low complexity in practice, but also because of its sufficiency in detecting covert communications for the scenario under investigation as justified in Appendix A.…”

Section: Detection Strategy At Wardenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wireless Covert Communications Aided by Distributed Cooperative Jamming over Slow Fading Channels

Zheng

Yang

Wang

et al. 2021

Preprint

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In this paper, we study covert communications between a pair of legitimate transmitter-receiver against a watchful warden over slow fading channels. There coexist multiple friendly helper nodes who are willing to protect the covert communication from being detected by the warden. We propose an uncoordinated jammer selection scheme where those helpers whose instantaneous channel gains to the legitimate receiver fall below a pre-established selection threshold will be chosen as jammers radiating jamming signals to defeat the warden. By doing so, the detection accuracy of the warden is expected to be severely degraded while the desired covert communication is rarely affected. We then jointly design the optimal selection threshold and message transmission rate for maximizing covert throughput under the premise that the detection error of the warden exceeds a certain level. Numerical results are presented to validate our theoretical analyses. It is shown that the multijammer assisted covert communication outperforms the conventional single-jammer method in terms of covert throughput, and the maximal covert throughput improves significantly as the total number of helpers increases, which demonstrates the validity and superiority of our proposed scheme.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The advantages of multiple antennas have also been exploitedat different users to improve the their own performance in covert communication [19]- [23]. In [19], Shahzad et al found that increasing the antennas equipped at the adversary Willie can reduce the covert throughput with the delay constraint. Zheng et al investigated the covert communication with a multi-antenna transmitter and randomly distributed interferers and wardens under the centralized and distributed antenna systems in [20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%