Semantic communication is a new paradigm that considers the meaning of transmitted information to optimize communication. One possible application is the remote monitoring of a process under communication costs: scheduling updates based on semantic considerations can significantly reduce transmission frequency while maintaining high-quality tracking performance. However, semantic scheduling also opens a timing-based side-channel that an eavesdropper may exploit to obtain information about the state of the remote process, even if the content of updates is perfectly secure. In this work, we study an eavesdropping attack against pull-based semantic scheduling for the tracking of remote Markov processes. We provide a theoretical framework for defining the effectiveness of the attack and of possible countermeasures, as well as a practical heuristic that can provide a balance between the performance gains offered by semantic communication and the information leakage.

翻译：语义通信是一种考虑传输信息含义以优化通信的新范式。其潜在应用之一是在通信成本约束下对远程过程进行监控：基于语义考量的调度更新可显著降低传输频率，同时保持高质量的跟踪性能。然而，语义调度同时开辟了基于时序的侧信道，即使更新内容完全安全，窃听者仍可能利用该信道获取远程过程的状态信息。本研究针对基于拉取模式的远程马尔可夫过程跟踪语义调度系统，提出一种窃听攻击方案。我们建立了理论框架以定义攻击效能与潜在防御措施的有效性，并提出一种实用启发式方法，可在语义通信带来的性能增益与信息泄露风险之间实现平衡。