With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), new security issues have emerged that traditional vulnerability categorization may not fully cover. IoT devices rely on sensors and actuators to interact with the real world, but this interaction process between physical and digital systems has created defects that are difficult to analyze and detect. These defects include unintentional coupling effects of sensors from ambient analog signals or abnormal channels that were not intentionally designed. Various security incidents have highlighted the prevalence of such vulnerabilities in IoT systems, and their activation can result in serious consequences. Our talk highlights the need to shift the research paradigm for traditional system security to encompass sensor vulnerabilities in the intelligence era. Finally, we explore potential solutions for mitigating sensor vulnerabilities and securing IoT devices.
Speaker's Biography: Wenyuan Xu is a Professor in the College of Electrical Engineering at Zhejiang University. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rutgers University in 2007. Before joining Zhejiang University in 2013, she was a tenured faculty member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Carolina in the United States. Her research focuses on embedded systems security, smart systems security, and IoT security. She is an IEEE fellow and a recipient of the NSF CAREER award. She received various best-paper awards including ACM CCS 2017 and ACM AsiaCCS 2018. In addition, she is a program committee co-chair for NDSS 2022-2023 and USENIX Security 2024, and serves as an associate editor for IEEE TMC, ACM TOSN, and TPS.