Secure Semantic Communications: Challenges, Approaches, and Opportunities

Semantic communication has emerged as a promising technique that can integrate the meaning and context of information into a communication process. It goes beyond raw data transmission and enables a sender and a receiver to transmit and recover semantic messages through their respective knowledge bases. However, it is challenging to achieve secure semantic communication due to complicated security and privacy threats in semantic communication. In this article, we first introduce the background and architecture of semantic communication. Then, we sort out multiple potential security threats existing in each step of semantic communication. Following that, we summarize the requirements for secure semantic communication and provide possible defenses for each type of attacks. We also present a case study to illustrate the training process of a reliable semantic encoder/decoder. Finally, we discuss open issues and future directions in this research field.