{"ID":2894351,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14212","arxiv_id":"2507.14212","title":"Secure Goal-Oriented Communication: Defending against Eavesdropping Timing Attacks","abstract":"Goal-oriented Communication (GoC) is a new paradigm that plans data transmission to occur only when it is instrumental for the receiver to achieve a certain goal. This leads to the advantage of reducing the frequency of transmissions significantly while maintaining adherence to the receiver's objectives. However, GoC scheduling also opens a timing-based side channel that an eavesdropper can exploit to obtain information about the state of the system. This type of attack sidesteps even information-theoretic security, as it exploits the timing of updates rather than their content. In this work, we study such an eavesdropping attack against pull-based goal-oriented scheduling for remote monitoring and control of Markov processes. We provide a theoretical framework for defining the effectiveness of the attack and propose possible countermeasures, including two practical heuristics that provide a balance between the performance gains offered by GoC and the amount of leaked information. Our results show that, while a naive goal-oriented scheduler allows the eavesdropper to correctly guess the system state about 60% of the time, our heuristic defenses can halve the leakage with a marginal reduction of the benefits of goal-oriented approaches.","short_abstract":"Goal-oriented Communication (GoC) is a new paradigm that plans data transmission to occur only when it is instrumental for the receiver to achieve a certain goal. This leads to the advantage of reducing the frequency of transmissions significantly while maintaining adherence to the receiver's objectives. However, GoC s...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14212","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.14212v1","authors":"[\"Federico Mason\",\"Federico Chiariotti\",\"Pietro Talli\",\"Andrea Zanella\"]","published":"2025-07-15T10:36:48Z","proceeding":"cs.CR","tasks":"[\"cs.CR\",\"eess.SY\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}