Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) have emerged as a transformative technology capable of reshaping wireless environments through dynamic manipulation of electromagnetic waves. Although RISs have been widely studied for communication, sensing, and localization, their security and privacy implications are still fragmented across application-specific studies, prototypes, and testbeds. This survey provides a deployment-oriented review of RIS applications, with a focus on the security and privacy threats, vulnerabilities, and defensive strategies relevant to practical use. We analyze scenarios with two types of systems (with and without legitimate RIS) and two types of attackers (with and without malicious RIS), and clarify how RIS introduces new attack surfaces to practical systems, including eavesdropping, jamming, and spoofing attacks. In response, we review defenses against RIS-related attacks in these systems, such as protocol- and algorithm-level protections, unauthorized RIS detection, and interference/disruption-based mitigation. We also discuss scenarios in which the legitimate user applies an additional RIS to defend against attacks. To support future research, we also curate papers and available open resources at https://awesome-ris-security.github.io/. By highlighting RIS's functionality and its security/privacy challenges and opportunities, this survey aims to guide researchers and engineers toward the development of secure, resilient, and privacy-preserving RIS-enabled practical wireless systems and environments.

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