NDSS 2025 – EMIRIS: Eavesdropping On Iris Information Via Electromagnetic Side Channel

Session 8B: Electromagnetic Attacks

Authors, Creators & Presenters: Wenhao Li (Shandong University), Jiahao Wang (Shandong University), Guoming Zhang (Shandong University), Yanni Yang (Shandong University), Riccardo Spolaor (Shandong University), Xiuzhen Cheng (Shandong University), Pengfei Hu (Shandong University) PAPER
EMIRIS: Eavesdropping On Iris Information Via Electromagnetic Side Channel Iris recognition is one of the most secure biometric methods due to the uniqueness and stability of iris patterns, as well as their resistance to forgery. Consequently, it is frequently used in high-security authentication scenarios. However, systems using Near-Infrared (NIR) sensors may expose the iris information of users, leading to significant privacy risks. Our research found that the electromagnetic (EM) emissions generated during data transmission of NIR sensors are closely related to iris data. Based on this observation, we propose EMIRIS, a method for reconstructing the iris information using EM side channels. By deconstructing the digital signal transmission format of the NIR sensors and the mapping mechanism of the iris data matrix, we can reconstruct iris information from EM signals and convert it into iris images. To improve the quality of the reconstructed iris, we model the denoising and restoration of iris texture details as a linear inverse problem and tailor a diffusion model to solve it. Extensive experimental evaluations show that EMIRIS can effectively reconstruct iris information from commercial iris recognition devices, achieving an average SSIM of 0.511 and an average FID of 7.25. Even more concerning, these reconstructed irises can effectively spoof the classical iris recognition model with an average success rate of 53.47% on more than 3,000 iris samples from 50 different users. ABOUT NDSS
The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners of network and distributed system security. The target audience includes those interested in practical aspects of network and distributed system security, with a focus on actual system design and implementation. A major goal is to encourage and enable the Internet community to apply, deploy, and advance the state of available security technologies. Our thanks to the **[Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium][1]** for publishing their Creators, Authors and Presenter’s superb **[NDSS Symposium 2025 Conference][2]** content on the **[organization’s’][1]** **[YouTube][3]** channel.

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*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Infosecurity.US authored by Marc Handelman. Read the original post at: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/PUyDUmuvg0o?si=BP2Zih40qOqGq8sv

January 10, 2026January 10, 2026 Marc Handelman appsec education, cybersecurity education, Electromagnetic Attacks, Infosecurity Education, NDSS 2025, NDSS Symposium, Network Security, Security Conferences, Session 8B