IRS-assisted CRC-collision covert injection attack in visible light communication&#x0002A;

SI Hualai; CHEN Deyuan; GAO Shaoshuai; ZHANG Can

doi:10.7523/j.ucas.2026.039

Journal of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences >

0 2026039

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7523/j.ucas.2026.039

IRS-assisted CRC-collision covert injection attack in visible light communication^*

SI Hualai ,
CHEN Deyuan ,
GAO Shaoshuai ,
ZHANG Can

Expand

School of Electronic, Electrical and Communication Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

Received date: 2026-03-23

Revised date: 2026-08-24

Online published: 2026-08-26

Supported by

^*Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities（No. E2E41902X2, E3ET901X2）

Fold

Abstract

Visible light communication (VLC) systems commonly employ cyclic redundancy check (CRC) to ensure frame integrity, yet targeted integrity attacks against CRC-protected VLC links remain largely unexplored. To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted CRC-collision covert injection framework for VLC systems. Under the on-off keying (OOK)/intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) model, a symbol-level attack model is developed for a system consisting of a main receiver and a cooperative receiver. Subject to the non-negative optical intensity constraint, the attack action is decomposed into two physically realizable operations, namely injection enhancement for 0→1 flipping and interception-based attenuation with controlled backfill for 1→0 flipping, where the controlled backfill is implemented through a weak-backfill constraint. On this basis, CRC-collision construction, dual-mode IRS switching, and joint waveform-IRS optimization are integrated to realize targeted symbol manipulation while suppressing anomalies in cooperative detection statistics. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves a frame-level attack success rate of 98%, with a CRC pass rate of 98% and an overall detection rate of 8%. Ablation studies further verify that dual-mode switching, ratio-deviation control, and the weak-backfill mechanism are all essential to maintaining both attack effectiveness and covertness. The proposed framework provides a tractable model for studying integrity-oriented stealth attacks in VLC systems and offers useful support for the design of corresponding detection and protection mechanisms.

Key words： visible light communication; intelligent reflecting surface; covert injection attack; cyclic redundancy check; cooperative detection

Cite this article

SI Hualai , CHEN Deyuan , GAO Shaoshuai , ZHANG Can . IRS-assisted CRC-collision covert injection attack in visible light communication^*[J]. Journal of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 0 : 2026039 . DOI: 10.7523/j.ucas.2026.039

References

[1] Elgala H, Mesleh R, Haas H.Indoor optical wireless communication: Potential and state-of-the-art[J]. IEEE Communications Magazine, 2011, 49(9): 56-62. DOI:10.1109/MCOM.2011.6011734.
[2] Arfaoui M A, Soltani M D, Tavakkolnia I, et al.Physical layer security for visible light communication systems: A survey[J]. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 2020, 22(3): 1887-1908. DOI:10.1109/COMST.2020.2988615.
[3] Yesilkaya A, Cogalan T, Erkucuk S, et al.Physical-layer security in visible light communications[C]//2020 2nd 6G Wireless Summit (6G SUMMIT). March 17-20, 2020, Levi, Finland. IEEE, 2020: 1-5. DOI:10.1109/6GSUMMIT49458.2020.9083799.
[4] Mostafa A, Lampe L.Physical-layer security for indoor visible light communications[C]//2014 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC). June 10-14, 2014, Sydney, NSW, Australia. IEEE, 2014: 3342-3347. DOI:10.1109/ICC.2014.6883837.
[5] Mostafa A, Lampe L.Securing visible light communications via friendly jamming[C]//2014 IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps). December 8-12, 2014, Austin, TX, USA. IEEE, 2015: 524-529. DOI:10.1109/GLOCOMW.2014.7063485.
[6] Mostafa A, Lampe L.Physical-layer security for MISO visible light communication channels[J]. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 2015, 33(9): 1806-1818. DOI:10.1109/JSAC.2015.2432513.
[7] Classen J, Chen J, Steinmetzer D, et al.The spy next door: Eavesdropping on high throughput visible light communications[C]//Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Visible Light Communications Systems. Paris France. ACM, 2015: 9-14. DOI:10.1145/2801073.2801075.
[8] Blinowski G.Security issues in visible light communication systems[J]. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 2015, 48(4): 234-239. DOI:10.1016/j.ifacol.2015.07.039.
[9] Wang F S, Liu C W, Wang Q, et al.Optical jamming enhances the secrecy performance of the generalized space-shift-keying-aided visible-light downlink[J]. IEEE Transactions on Communications, 2018, 66(9): 4087-4102. DOI:10.1109/TCOMM.2018.2831687.
[10] Cho S, Chen G J, Coon J P.Securing visible light communications with spatial jamming[C]//ICC 2019 - 2019 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC). May 20-24, 2019, Shanghai, China. IEEE, 2019: 1-6. DOI:10.1109/ICC.2019.8761165.
[11] Tian D H, Zhang W S, Sun J, et al.Physical-layer security of visible light communications with jamming[C]//2019 IEEE/CIC International Conference on Communications in China (ICCC). August 11-13, 2019, Changchun, China. IEEE, 2019: 512-517. DOI:10.1109/ICCChina.2019.8855859.
[12] Yucebas D, Yuksel H.Power analysis based side-channel attack on visible light communication[J]. Physical Communication, 2018, 31: 196-202. DOI:10.1016/j.phycom.2018.04.013.
[13] Qarinah N N, Pamukti B, Dewanta F, et al.Performance evaluation of CRC-16 in indoor visible light communication (VLC) against jamming attack[C]//2023 IEEE Asia Pacific Conference on Wireless and Mobile (APWiMob). October 10-12, 2023, Bali, Indonesia. IEEE, 2023: 237-242. DOI:10.1109/APWiMob59963.2023.10365651.
[14] Blinowski G J.The feasibility of launching rogue transmitter attacks in indoor visible light communication networks[J]. Wireless Personal Communications, 2017, 97(4): 5325-5343. DOI:10.1007/s11277-017-4781-3.
[15] Ijaz A, Rahman M M U, Dobre O A. On safeguarding visible light communication systems against attacks by active adversaries[J]. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, 2020, 32(1): 11-14. DOI:10.1109/LPT.2019.2955023.
[16] Park S H, Joo S, Lee I G.Secure visible light communication system via cooperative attack detecting techniques[J]. IEEE Access, 2022, 10: 20473-20485. DOI:10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3151627.
[17] Saifaldeen D A, Ciftler B S, Abdallah M M, et al.DRL-based IRS-assisted secure visible light communications[J]. IEEE Photonics Journal, 2022, 14(6): 8656209. DOI:10.1109/JPHOT.2022.3178852.
[18] Abumarshoud H, Chen C, Tavakkolnia I, et al.Intelligent reflecting surfaces for enhanced physical layer security in NOMA VLC systems[C]//ICC 2023 - IEEE International Conference on Communications. May 28 - June 1, 2023, Rome, Italy. IEEE, 2023: 3284-3289. DOI:10.1109/ICC45041.2023.10279487.
[19] Soderi S, Brighente A, Turrin F, et al.VLC physical layer security through RIS-aided jamming receiver for 6G wireless networks[C]//2022 19th Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON). September 20-23, 2022, Stockholm, Sweden. IEEE, 2022: 370-378. DOI:10.1109/SECON55815.2022.9918547.
[20] Qian L, Wu F Q, Wang D, et al.Optical RIS-aided covert visible light communications[J]. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 2025, 74(7): 11518-11523. DOI:10.1109/TVT.2025.3545851.
[21] Brighente A, Xu S Q, Soderi S, et al.Physical layer authentication for distributed RIS (DRIS) enabled VLC systems[C]//ICC 2024 - IEEE International Conference on Communications. June 9-13, 2024, Denver, CO, USA. IEEE, 2024: 3340-3345. DOI:10.1109/ICC51166.2024.10623110.
[22] Chen C, Huang S J, Abumarshoud H, et al.Frequency-domain channel characteristics of intelligent reflecting surface assisted visible light communication[J]. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 2023, 41(24): 7355-7369. DOI:10.1109/JLT.2023.3299520.
[23] Abumarshoud H, Biagi M.Intelligent reflecting surface-aided visible light communications for granting indoor secrecy[C]//ICC 2024 - IEEE International Conference on Communications. June 9-13, 2024, Denver, CO, USA. IEEE, 2024: 3701-3706. DOI:10.1109/ICC51166.2024.10622632.
[24] Deng Y Y, Zhu K, Wang R, et al.Real-time detection of false data injection attacks based on load forecasting in smart grid[C]//2019 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (SmartGridComm). October 21-23, 2019, Beijing, China. IEEE, 2019: 1-6. DOI:10.1109/SmartGridComm.2019.8909811.
[25] Sun S Y, Yang F, Song J.Sum rate maximization for intelligent reflecting surface-aided visible light communications[J]. IEEE Communications Letters, 2021, 25(11): 3619-3623. DOI:10.1109/LCOMM.2021.3109285.
[26] Yao D, Chang Z, Min G Y.Joint resource allocation for IRS-aided VLC network with energy harvesting[C]//2023 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC Workshops). May 28 - June 1, 2023, Rome, Italy. IEEE, 2023: 1606-1611. DOI:10.1109/ICCWorkshops57953.2023.10283703.
[27] Shi H Y, Zhang S, Zhao Y, et al.IRS-assisted secrecy rate maximization for visible light communication based on improved particle swarm optimization algorithm[C]//2024 5th International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Human-Computer Interaction (ICHCI). September 27-29, 2024, Nanchang, China. IEEE, 2024: 139-143. DOI:10.1109/ICHCI63580.2024.10807948.
[28] Iqbal R, Biagi M, Zoha A, et al.Leveraging IRS induced time delay for enhanced physical layer security in VLC systems[J]. IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, 2024, 13(11): 3147-3151. DOI:10.1109/LWC.2024.3456434.

Options

Outlines

模态框（Modal）标题

Abstract

Cite this article

References