A Survey on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces in Practical Systems: Security and Privacy Perspectives

TL;DR

This survey reviews the application of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces in real-world systems, focusing on security and privacy challenges, threats, and defenses to guide future development of secure RIS-enabled wireless environments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of security and privacy issues in practical RIS deployments, including threat scenarios, defense strategies, and open-source resources for research advancement.

Findings

RIS can introduce new security threats like eavesdropping and spoofing

Defense strategies include security algorithms and early attack detection

RIS applications in practical systems face unique vulnerabilities

Abstract

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) have emerged as a transformative technology capable of reshaping wireless environments through dynamic manipulation of electromagnetic waves. While extensive research has explored their theoretical benefits for communication and sensing, practical deployments in smart environments such as homes, vehicles, and industrial settings remain limited and under-examined, particularly from security and privacy perspectives. This survey provides a comprehensive examination of RIS applications in real-world systems, with a focus on the security and privacy threats, vulnerabilities, and defensive strategies relevant to practical use. We analyze scenarios with two types of systems (with and without legitimate RIS) and two types of attackers (with and without malicious RIS), and demonstrate how RIS may introduce new attacks to practical systems, including eavesdropping, jamming, and spoofing attacks. In response, we review defenses against RIS-related attacks in these systems, such as applying additional security algorithms, disrupting attackers, and early detection of unauthorized RIS. We also discuss scenarios in which the legitimate user applies an additional RIS to defend against attacks. To support future research, we also provide a collection of open-source tools, datasets, demos, and papers at: https://awesome-ris-security.github.io/. By highlighting RIS's functionality and its security/privacy challenges and opportunities, this survey aims to guide researchers and engineers toward the development of secure, resilient, and privacy-preserving RIS-enabled practical wireless systems and environments.