Secure Goal-Oriented Communication: Defending against Eavesdropping Timing Attacks
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arXiv
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| Autores principales: | , , , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866918097576787968 |
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| author | Mason, Federico Chiariotti, Federico Talli, Pietro Zanella, Andrea |
| author_facet | Mason, Federico Chiariotti, Federico Talli, Pietro Zanella, Andrea |
| contents | Goal-oriented Communication (GoC) is a new paradigm that plans data transmission to occur only when it is instrumental for the receiver to achieve a certain goal. This leads to the advantage of reducing the frequency of transmissions significantly while maintaining adherence to the receiver's objectives. However, GoC scheduling also opens a timing-based side channel that an eavesdropper can exploit to obtain information about the state of the system. This type of attack sidesteps even information-theoretic security, as it exploits the timing of updates rather than their content. In this work, we study such an eavesdropping attack against pull-based goal-oriented scheduling for remote monitoring and control of Markov processes. We provide a theoretical framework for defining the effectiveness of the attack and propose possible countermeasures, including two practical heuristics that provide a balance between the performance gains offered by GoC and the amount of leaked information. Our results show that, while a naive goal-oriented scheduler allows the eavesdropper to correctly guess the system state about 60% of the time, our heuristic defenses can halve the leakage with a marginal reduction of the benefits of goal-oriented approaches. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_14212 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Secure Goal-Oriented Communication: Defending against Eavesdropping Timing Attacks Mason, Federico Chiariotti, Federico Talli, Pietro Zanella, Andrea Cryptography and Security Systems and Control Goal-oriented Communication (GoC) is a new paradigm that plans data transmission to occur only when it is instrumental for the receiver to achieve a certain goal. This leads to the advantage of reducing the frequency of transmissions significantly while maintaining adherence to the receiver's objectives. However, GoC scheduling also opens a timing-based side channel that an eavesdropper can exploit to obtain information about the state of the system. This type of attack sidesteps even information-theoretic security, as it exploits the timing of updates rather than their content. In this work, we study such an eavesdropping attack against pull-based goal-oriented scheduling for remote monitoring and control of Markov processes. We provide a theoretical framework for defining the effectiveness of the attack and propose possible countermeasures, including two practical heuristics that provide a balance between the performance gains offered by GoC and the amount of leaked information. Our results show that, while a naive goal-oriented scheduler allows the eavesdropper to correctly guess the system state about 60% of the time, our heuristic defenses can halve the leakage with a marginal reduction of the benefits of goal-oriented approaches. |
| title | Secure Goal-Oriented Communication: Defending against Eavesdropping Timing Attacks |
| topic | Cryptography and Security Systems and Control |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14212 |