Privacy-Preserving Semantic Communications via Multi-Task Learning and Adversarial Perturbations

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Sagduyu, Yalin E., Erpek, Tugba, Yener, Aylin, Ulukus, Sennur
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Sagduyu, Yalin E.
Erpek, Tugba
Yener, Aylin
Ulukus, Sennur
author_facet Sagduyu, Yalin E.
Erpek, Tugba
Yener, Aylin
Ulukus, Sennur
contents Semantic communications conveys task-relevant meaning rather than focusing solely on message reconstruction, improving bandwidth efficiency and robustness for next-generation wireless systems. However, learned semantic representations can still leak sensitive information to unintended receivers (eavesdroppers). This paper presents a deep learning-based semantic communication framework that jointly supports multiple receiver tasks while explicitly limiting semantic leakage to an eavesdropper. The legitimate link employs a learned encoder at the transmitter, while the receiver trains decoders for semantic inference and data reconstruction. The security problem is formulated via an iterative min-max optimization in which an eavesdropper is trained to improve its semantic inference, while the legitimate transmitter-receiver pair is trained to preserve task performance while reducing the eavesdropper's success. We also introduce an auxiliary layer that superimposes a cooperative, adversarially crafted perturbation on the transmitted waveform to degrade semantic leakage to an eavesdropper. Performance is evaluated over Rayleigh fading channels with additive white Gaussian noise using MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets. Semantic accuracy and reconstruction quality improve with increasing latent dimension, while the min-max mechanism reduces the eavesdropper's inference performance significantly without degrading the legitimate receiver. The perturbation layer is successful in reducing semantic leakage even when the legitimate link is trained only for its own task. This comprehensive framework motivates semantic communication designs with tunable, end-to-end privacy against adaptive adversaries in realistic wireless settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_24452
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Privacy-Preserving Semantic Communications via Multi-Task Learning and Adversarial Perturbations
Sagduyu, Yalin E.
Erpek, Tugba
Yener, Aylin
Ulukus, Sennur
Networking and Internet Architecture
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Information Theory
Machine Learning
Semantic communications conveys task-relevant meaning rather than focusing solely on message reconstruction, improving bandwidth efficiency and robustness for next-generation wireless systems. However, learned semantic representations can still leak sensitive information to unintended receivers (eavesdroppers). This paper presents a deep learning-based semantic communication framework that jointly supports multiple receiver tasks while explicitly limiting semantic leakage to an eavesdropper. The legitimate link employs a learned encoder at the transmitter, while the receiver trains decoders for semantic inference and data reconstruction. The security problem is formulated via an iterative min-max optimization in which an eavesdropper is trained to improve its semantic inference, while the legitimate transmitter-receiver pair is trained to preserve task performance while reducing the eavesdropper's success. We also introduce an auxiliary layer that superimposes a cooperative, adversarially crafted perturbation on the transmitted waveform to degrade semantic leakage to an eavesdropper. Performance is evaluated over Rayleigh fading channels with additive white Gaussian noise using MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets. Semantic accuracy and reconstruction quality improve with increasing latent dimension, while the min-max mechanism reduces the eavesdropper's inference performance significantly without degrading the legitimate receiver. The perturbation layer is successful in reducing semantic leakage even when the legitimate link is trained only for its own task. This comprehensive framework motivates semantic communication designs with tunable, end-to-end privacy against adaptive adversaries in realistic wireless settings.
title Privacy-Preserving Semantic Communications via Multi-Task Learning and Adversarial Perturbations
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Information Theory
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.24452