Advanced Techniques for Preventing Thermal Imaging Attacks

Alotaibi, N. , Islam, M. S., Marky, K. and Khamis, M. (2022) Advanced Techniques for Preventing Thermal Imaging Attacks. In: 27th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '22), 21-25 Mar 2022, pp. 18-21. ISBN 9781450391450 (doi: 10.1145/3490100.3516472)

Abstract

Thermal cameras can be used to detect user input on interfaces, such as touchscreens, keyboards, and PIN pads, by recording the heat traces left by the users’ fingers after interaction (e.g., typing a message or entering a PIN) and using them to reconstruct the input. While previous work mitigated the thermal attacks by complicating input or distorting heat traces, our research is the first to propose preventing thermal attack using deep learning (DL) techniques to prevent malicious use of thermal cameras. Our DL models detect interfaces in the thermal camera feed and then obfuscate heat traces on them. Our preliminary findings show that the proposed framework can detect interfaces and eliminate authentication information from thermal images. At the same time, our methods still reveal if an interface has been interacted with. Thus, our approach improves security without impacting the utility of the thermal camera.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Additional Information: This work has been supported by the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity, which has been funded by the UK EPSRC under grant number EP/S035362/1, an EPSRC New Investigator award (EP/V008870/1), Taif University and Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia Cultural Bureau in London, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Award number 65040).
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Marky, Dr Karola and Alotaibi, Norah Mohsen T and Islam, Mr Md Shafiqul and Khamis, Dr Mohamed
• Authors: Alotaibi, N., Islam, M. S., Marky, K., and Khamis, M.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• ISBN: 9781450391450
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2022 The Authors
• First Published: First published in 27th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '22): 18-21
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy

Related URLs

• Organisation

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
310627		TAPS: Assessing, Mitigating and Raising Awareness of the Security and Privacy Risks of Thermal Imaging	Mohamed Khamis	Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)	EP/V008870/1	Computing Science
309501		RSE Enterprise	Mohamed Khamis	The Royal Society of Edinburgh (ROYSOCED)	65040	Computing Science
313490		Preventing THErmal ATtacks using AI-driven Approaches	Mohamed Khamis	Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)	5676417 -PETRAS	Computing Science