Adversarial Attacks and Defenses for Semantic Communication in Vehicular Metaverses

For vehicular Metaverses, one of the ultimate user-centric goals is to optimize the immersive experience and Quality of Service (QoS) for users on board. Semantic Communication (SemCom) has been introduced as a revolutionary paradigm that significantly eases communication resource pressure for vehicular Metaverse applications to achieve this goal. SemCom enables high-quality and ultra-efficient vehicular communication, even with explosively increasing data traffic among vehicles. In this article, we propose a hierarchical SemCom-enabled vehicular Metaverses framework consisting of the global Metaverse, local Metaverses, SemCom module, and resource pool. The global and local Metaverse are brand-new concepts from the Metaverse's distribution stand-point. Considering the QoS of users, this article explores the potential security vulnerabilities of the proposed framework. To that purpose, this study highlights a specific security risk to the framework's SemCom module and offers a viable defense solution to encourage community researchers to focus more on vehicular Metaverse security. Finally, we provide an overview of the open issues of secure SemCom in the vehicular Metaverses, notably pointing out potential future research directions.