Edge Learning for 6G-Enabled Internet of Things: A Comprehensive Survey of Vulnerabilities, Datasets, and Defenses

The deployment of the fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks in Internet of Everything (IoE) applications and future networks (e.g., sixth-generation (6G) networks) has raised a number of operational challenges and limitations, for example in terms of security and privacy. Edge learning is an emerging approach to training models across distributed clients while ensuring data privacy. Such an approach when integrated in future network infrastructures (e.g., 6G) can potentially solve challenging problems such as resource management and behavior prediction. However, edge learning (including distributed deep learning) are known to be susceptible to tampering and manipulation. This survey article provides a holistic review of the extant literature focusing on edge learning-related vulnerabilities and defenses for 6G-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Existing machine learning approaches for 6G–IoT security and machine learning-associated threats are broadly categorized based on learning modes, namely: centralized, federated, and distributed. Then, we provide an overview of enabling emerging technologies for 6G–IoT intelligence. We also provide a holistic survey of existing research on attacks against machine learning and classify threat models into eight categories, namely: backdoor attacks, adversarial examples, combined attacks, poisoning attacks, Sybil attacks, byzantine attacks, inference attacks, and dropping attacks. In addition, we provide a comprehensive and detailed taxonomy and a comparative summary of the state-of-the-art defense methods against edge learning-related vulnerabilities. Finally, as new attacks and defense technologies are realized, new research and future overall prospects for 6G-enabled IoT are discussed.