Research Seminar- Dr Zhuangkun Wei (Durham University)

Talk Overview:

In future 6G communication systems, there will be new threats in cybersecurity:

• The broadcasting communications nature in the wireless medium, making the exchanged information easily being intercepted.
• The new-developed communication/sensing-aid devices, e.g. reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), and passive sensors, can enable more concealed eavesdropping attacks, due to their passive operation modes.
• 30B Internet-of-Everythings (IoE) devices, making current mathematical complexity-based cryptography less attractive, requires lightweight cipher keys/authentication methods.
• Adversarial quantum machines are turning cryptographic security into a time-bound race, as modern cryptography lacks a theoretical secrecy guarantee with developed super-computer-based attackers.

In recent years, the concepts of physical layer security has been proposed, which generates cipher keys leveraging the reciprocal physical and dynamical information uniquely between Alice and Bob, with no need of high computation for cipher key generation/distribution. In this seminar, 4 state-of-the-art research and demos will be provided, leveraging different physical and dynamical phenomena to secure the communication channels, spanning the diverse realms of electromagnetics, fluid dynamics, blood flow, and aero-dynamics in UAV control. We aim to encourage broader integration of physics and dynamic system studies into cybersecurity, paving the way for lightweight and effective security strategies toward a safer digital environment.

Speaker Bio:

Zhuangkun is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering at Durham University, and also an Academic Visiting at the Department of Computing, Imperial College London. Previously, He was a research fellow at Imperial College on the EPSRC project The Communications Hub for Empowering Distributed Cloud Computing Applications and Research (CHEDDAR); and a research fellow at Cranfield University on the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Security (TAS-S). He completed his PhD in 2021 at the University of Warwick.

His research interests cover machine learning, signal processing for wireless communications, and UAV controls. He has published over 30 papers in top IEEE, ACM, OSA, and Nature Group Publications (including 8 first-authored IEEE Transactions).