This page maintains a living bibliography of follow-up and closely related work on sensor electromagnetic (EM) side-channel leakage. The goal is to give proper credit to all researchers while documenting how the research area has developed.
EM Eye, published at NDSS 2024, pioneered the systematic study of content-level electromagnetic side-channel eavesdropping on embedded camera and image-sensor data transmission. By showing that deterministic, unprotected sensor data transmission can induce reconstructable EM leakage, EM Eye laid groundwork for the broader research line on sensor EM side-channel leakage.
| Year | Work | Sensor modality | Relationship to EM Eye |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | FPLogger: Recovering Fingerprints from In-Display Fingerprint Sensors via Electromagnetic Side Channel | In-display fingerprint sensors | Closely related predecessor in biometric EM side-channel leakage. It is listed to give proper credit and to distinguish the broader biometric EM leakage area from the embedded-camera branch pioneered by EM Eye. |
| 2024 | EM Eye: Characterizing Electromagnetic Side-channel Eavesdropping on Embedded Cameras | Embedded RGB cameras and image sensors | Foundational work for content-level EM eavesdropping on embedded camera and image-sensor data transmission. |
| 2025 | EMIRIS: Eavesdropping on Iris Information via Electromagnetic Side Channel | Near-infrared iris sensors | Follow-up and related work extending EM reconstruction to iris-recognition sensors. |
| 2025/2026 | EMPalm: Exfiltrating Palm Biometric Data via Electromagnetic Side-Channels | Palmprint and palmvein sensors | Follow-up and related work extending sensor EM leakage to palm biometric systems. |
Please cite the NDSS 2024 paper when using EM Eye, discussing content-level EM eavesdropping on embedded camera and image-sensor data transmission, or referencing this research lineage.
@inproceedings{long2024emeye,
title = {EM Eye: Characterizing Electromagnetic Side-channel Eavesdropping on Embedded Cameras},
author = {Long, Yan and Jiang, Qinhong and Yan, Chen and Alam, Tobias and Ji, Xiaoyu and Xu, Wenyuan and Fu, Kevin},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)},
year = {2024},
url = {https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss-paper/em-eye-characterizing-electromagnetic-side-channel-eavesdropping-on-embedded-cameras/}
}
A machine-readable bibliography is also available as followup_works.bib.
@inproceedings{long2024emeye,
title = {EM Eye: Characterizing Electromagnetic Side-channel Eavesdropping on Embedded Cameras},
author = {Long, Yan and Jiang, Qinhong and Yan, Chen and Alam, Tobias and Ji, Xiaoyu and Xu, Wenyuan and Fu, Kevin},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)},
year = {2024},
url = {https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss-paper/em-eye-characterizing-electromagnetic-side-channel-eavesdropping-on-embedded-cameras/}
}
@inproceedings{ni2023fplogger,
title = {Recovering Fingerprints from In-Display Fingerprint Sensors via Electromagnetic Side Channel},
author = {Ni, Tao and Zhang, Xiaokuan and Zhao, Qingchuan},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.1145/3576915.3623153},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3576915.3623153}
}
@inproceedings{li2025emiris,
title = {EMIRIS: Eavesdropping on Iris Information via Electromagnetic Side Channel},
author = {Li, Wenhao and Wang, Jiahao and Zhang, Guoming and Yang, Yanni and Spolaor, Riccardo and Cheng, Xiuzhen and Hu, Pengfei},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)},
year = {2025},
url = {https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2025-200-paper.pdf}
}
@misc{xu2025empalm,
title = {EMPalm: Exfiltrating Palm Biometric Data via Electromagnetic Side-Channels},
author = {Xu, Haowen and Zhao, Tianya and Wang, Xuyu and Ma, Lei and Dai, Jun and Wyglinski, Alexander and Sun, Xiaoyan},
year = {2025},
eprint = {2510.07533},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
primaryClass = {cs.CR},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07533}
}
No. Electromagnetic side-channel attacks have a long history, including earlier work on displays, computation, cryptographic devices, and other hardware systems. EM Eye's contribution is more specific: it pioneered the systematic study of content-level EM eavesdropping on embedded camera and image-sensor data transmission.
EM Eye showed that deterministic, unprotected sensor data transmission can create image-dependent electromagnetic emissions that allow reconstruction of camera outputs. This root-cause view provided a reusable framework for studying EM leakage from other sensing systems whose data paths may also emit content-dependent signals.
Later work has extended the broader sensor EM side-channel leakage problem to other sensing modalities, including near-infrared iris sensors, palmprint sensors, and palmvein sensors. These works investigate different sensors and systems, while sharing the broader concern that sensor data transmission can create content-dependent EM emissions.