arXiv subjects

Sze Yiu Chau

Publications and source records attributed to Sze Yiu Chau.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Lightweight Detection of Electromagnetic Signal Injection Attacks on Image Sensors

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.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2026

A Simulation Framework for Electromagnetic Signal Injection Attacks on Image Sensors

Image sensors are fundamental to many intelligent systems, allowing visual perception and AI-driven decision-making. However, their integrity can be compromised by electromagnetic signal injection attacks (ESIA), which manipulate captured images without modifying sensor hardware or software. Despite the growing threat, system-level understanding of the attacks, as well as the development of defenses, remains limited, in part because collecting adversarial data is often complex and requires specialized attack setups. To address this challenge, we model ESIA and develop a simulation framework for generating synthetic adversarial images. Our analysis shows that these synthetic images are statistically indistinguishable from those produced by real attacks. The proposed framework enables faster vulnerability evaluation of computer vision (CV) algorithms, without the need for dedicated attack hardware. We also present a pilot study showing that the robustness of the algorithms can be improved by adversarial training, demonstrating a practical and scalable path toward mitigating ESIA threats.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2026

Phantom Force: Injecting Adversarial Tactile Perceptions into Embodied Intelligence via EMI

Embodied intelligent robots rely on tactile sensors to interact with the physical world safely. While the security of visual perception systems has been studied (e.g., adversarial samples), the integrity of the tactile sensory channel remains unexplored. This work explores a vulnerability in Hall-effect fingertip sensors, showing their susceptibility to intentional Electromagnetic Interference (EMI). We demonstrate that a targeted signal injection can induce strong "phantom forces", amplifying perceived force magnitude by over 9$\times$ and deviating the inferred force direction by 65$^\circ$. Such perturbations can paralyze learning-based tactile classification models, seriously affecting robot movement. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to coerce a robot hand into crushing fragile objects or dropping dangerous payloads.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2020

Random Spiking and Systematic Evaluation of Defenses Against Adversarial Examples

Image classifiers often suffer from adversarial examples, which are generated by strategically adding a small amount of noise to input images to trick classifiers into misclassification. Over the years, many defense mechanisms have been proposed, and different researchers have made seemingly contradictory claims on their effectiveness. We present an analysis of possible adversarial models, and propose an evaluation framework for comparing different defense mechanisms. As part of the framework, we introduce a more powerful and realistic adversary strategy. Furthermore, we propose a new defense mechanism called Random Spiking (RS), which generalizes dropout and introduces random noises in the training process in a controlled manner. Evaluations under our proposed framework suggest RS delivers better protection against adversarial examples than many existing schemes.

cs.LG↗