CRII: SaTC: Towards Secure and Privacy-preserving Input on Augmented Reality Systems

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

Augmented reality is a type of interaction and immersive experience that overlays the real-world scene with virtual objects. To deliver such an experience, augmented reality devices rely on various sensors to sense the user and surrounding environment accurately and synchronously. However, the sensors suffer from various attacks, which further negatively affect the augmented reality experience. The goal of this project is to have a complete understanding of feasible attacks on all sensors in augmented reality devices and propose new defense algorithms against found attacks. The outcome of the research will improve the security and privacy of augmented reality devices.

To accomplish this goal, the project focuses on (i) identifying feasible sensor injection attacks and proposing defense algorithms with behavior knowledge and sensor fusion, (ii) studying what sensitive information can be inferred using the existing sensor data on augmented reality devices, and (iii) proposing an inference prevention model in the operating system to filter out sensitive information in sensor data before sending them to augmented reality applications. The outcome of this work can provide insights for building secure and privacy-preserving augmented reality applications and devices. This project will also engage graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 students to develop their interests in computer security and privacy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.