mmVanish: Extending the Vanish Attack for Multi-Radar Exploitation of mmWave Sensing with Meta-material Tags
Xinmin Fang, Hailu Xu, Lingfeng Tao, Zhengxiong Li · 2025
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar systems are widely used for object detection and tracking in critical applications, but recent research has exposed their vulnerability to vanish attacks. This paper extends the vanish attack -- previously demonstrated on a single radar -- to multiple radar systems operating at 24 GHz, 66 GHz, and 77 GHz. We utilize meta-material-enhanced tags to interfere with radar signals passively, effectively rendering real objects undetectable. We describe a methodology for designing and deploying these low-cost meta-material tags and evaluate the attack's effectiveness across different radar frequencies. Experimental results show that the meta-material tags successfully cause objects to "disappear" from all three radar systems, drastically reducing detection accuracy at each frequency. The study's contributions include demonstrating the generalizability of the vanish attack across diverse mmWave radar bands, analyzing performance differences by frequency, and discussing countermeasures. Our findings confirm that meta-material tag attacks pose a serious threat to mmWave sensing, underscoring the need for improved radar security and multi-sensor defenses.