2021/08/19 by Sebastian Köhler, Richard Baker, Köhler, Sebastian +3 · 4 citations
Computer Science · Engineering · #Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV) #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #Digital Media Forensic Detection #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Integrated Circuits and Semiconductor Failure Analysis #Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2108.08881
openalex publication_date 2021/08/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Since cameras have become a crucial part in many safety-critical systems and applications, such as autonomous vehicles and surveillance, a large body of academic and non-academic work has shown attacks against their main component - the image sensor. However, these attacks are limited to coarse-grained and often suspicious injections because light is used as an attack vector. Furthermore, due to the nature of optical attacks, they require the line-of-sight between the adversary and the target camera. In this paper, we present a novel post-transducer signal injection attack against CCD image sensors, as they are used in professional, scientific, and even military settings. We show how electromagnetic emanation can be used to manipulate the image information captured by a CCD image sensor with the granularity down to the brightness of individual pixels. We study the feasibility of our attack and then demonstrate its effects in the scenario of automatic barcode scanning. Our results indicate that the injected distortion can disrupt automated vision-based intelligent systems.