Siren Song: Manipulating Pose Estimation in XR Headsets Using Acoustic Attacks

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Huang, Zijian, Zhang, Yicheng, Chen, Sophie, Abu-Ghazaleh, Nael, Chen, Jiasi
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Huang, Zijian
Zhang, Yicheng
Chen, Sophie
Abu-Ghazaleh, Nael
Chen, Jiasi
author_facet Huang, Zijian
Zhang, Yicheng
Chen, Sophie
Abu-Ghazaleh, Nael
Chen, Jiasi
contents Extended Reality (XR) experiences involve interactions between users, the real world, and virtual content. A key step to enable these experiences is the XR headset sensing and estimating the user's pose in order to accurately place and render virtual content in the real world. XR headsets use multiple sensors (e.g., cameras, inertial measurement unit) to perform pose estimation and improve its robustness, but this provides an attack surface for adversaries to interfere with the pose estimation process. In this paper, we create and study the effects of acoustic attacks that create false signals in the inertial measurement unit (IMU) on XR headsets, leading to adverse downstream effects on XR applications. We generate resonant acoustic signals on a HoloLens 2 and measure the resulting perturbations in the IMU readings, and also demonstrate both fine-grained and coarse attacks on the popular ORB-SLAM3 and an open-source XR system (ILLIXR). With the knowledge gleaned from attacking these open-source frameworks, we demonstrate four end-to-end proof-of-concept attacks on a HoloLens 2: manipulating user input, clickjacking, zone invasion, and denial of user interaction. Our experiments show that current commercial XR headsets are susceptible to acoustic attacks, raising concerns for their security.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_08865
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Siren Song: Manipulating Pose Estimation in XR Headsets Using Acoustic Attacks
Huang, Zijian
Zhang, Yicheng
Chen, Sophie
Abu-Ghazaleh, Nael
Chen, Jiasi
Cryptography and Security
Extended Reality (XR) experiences involve interactions between users, the real world, and virtual content. A key step to enable these experiences is the XR headset sensing and estimating the user's pose in order to accurately place and render virtual content in the real world. XR headsets use multiple sensors (e.g., cameras, inertial measurement unit) to perform pose estimation and improve its robustness, but this provides an attack surface for adversaries to interfere with the pose estimation process. In this paper, we create and study the effects of acoustic attacks that create false signals in the inertial measurement unit (IMU) on XR headsets, leading to adverse downstream effects on XR applications. We generate resonant acoustic signals on a HoloLens 2 and measure the resulting perturbations in the IMU readings, and also demonstrate both fine-grained and coarse attacks on the popular ORB-SLAM3 and an open-source XR system (ILLIXR). With the knowledge gleaned from attacking these open-source frameworks, we demonstrate four end-to-end proof-of-concept attacks on a HoloLens 2: manipulating user input, clickjacking, zone invasion, and denial of user interaction. Our experiments show that current commercial XR headsets are susceptible to acoustic attacks, raising concerns for their security.
title Siren Song: Manipulating Pose Estimation in XR Headsets Using Acoustic Attacks
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08865