Malicious Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: How Impactful Can Destructive Beamforming be?

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have demonstrated significant potential for enhancing communication system performance if properly configured. However, a RIS might also pose a risk to the network security. In this letter, we explore the impact of a malicious RIS on a multi-user multiple-input single-output (MISO) system when the system is unaware of the RIS’s malicious intentions. The objective of the malicious RIS is to degrade the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a specific user equipment (UE), with the option of preserving the SNR of the other UEs, making the attack harder to detect. To achieve this goal, we derive the optimal RIS phase-shift pattern, assuming perfect channel state information (CSI) at the hacker. We then relax this assumption by introducing CSI uncertainties and subsequently determine the RIS’s phase-shift pattern using a robust optimization approach. Our simulations reveal a direct proportionality between the performance degradation caused by the malicious RIS and the number of reflective elements, along with resilience toward CSI uncertainties.