For cybersecurity researchers, transformers do more than meets the eye

“Transformers” may conjure images of Autobots and Decepticons battling it out on the big screen, but to a group of Clemson University researchers it has a whole different meaning– and it is key in a cybersecurity breakthrough.

The transformer used in the new Clemson-led project is a deep-learning architecture that powers large language models—a form of artificial intelligence capable of processing and generating human-like language.

But a Clemson-led team has repurposed the transformer for a new use– helping ensure the security of messages that are sent wirelessly. The team calls its development a transformer-based Automatic Modulation Recognition system.

It has the potential to join the often-unseen bulwark against hackers, benefitting everyone from two friends texting lunch plans to commanders communicating with soldiers on the battlefield, researchers said.

The system is a new solution to a vulnerability that has existed for years, they said. When a message is sent from a transmitter to a receiver, it is possible to use a jammer to tamper with the message.

But researchers found that their transformer-based system can spot and resist the attacks, making wireless messages more secure and reliable, even when someone tries to jam or hack them.

The Clemson-led team tested its system with over 30 million real signals in both indoor and outdoor settings.

Without attacks, it correctly identified signals 94.17% of the time, researchers found. Even during attacks, the system still got it right 71.2% of the time, far surpassing older methods, they found.

The team described its findings in a paper published at May’s IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy in San Francisco.

The lead co-authors were Gen Li and Chun-Chih Lin, both Ph.D. students in the lab of Linke Guo, an associate professor in Clemson’s Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The idea for the project grew out of a paper that Li presented in one of Guo’s classes. Li also took the lead in presenting the paper at the IEEE symposium.

“After the talk, we had a poster stage, and there were a lot of researchers from other schools and companies who came to me to talk about the project and share their ideas and problems with me,” Li said. “So I feel very happy about that.”

Li and Lin, who are both on track to receive their Ph.D.s in August 2026, said the paper helps raise their profile as they begin their search for jobs on university faculties.

“Anyone using radio frequency to transmit signals will benefit from this research,” Lin said. “The biggest reason is that we use the transformer, which has never been used before in the wireless domain.”

Guo said that while Clemson faculty members have presented papers at the IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy in years past, the transformer research marks the first time that Clemson students have had the honor as lead authors.

The Army has expressed high interest in the system, Guo said.

“Our development approach is pretty straightforward– plug-and-play kind of stuff,” he said. “You just deploy the models at the receiver, and then you should be able to use it.”

The title of the paper is, “Adversarial Robust ViT-Based Automatic Modulation Recognition in Practical Deep Learning-Based Wireless Systems.”

Co-authors include Guo; Xiaolong Ma, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Clemson; and Xiaonan Zhang, who studied for her Ph.D. under Guo and is now an assistant professor of computer science at Florida State University.

The research has been supported by the U.S. Army Research Office and the U.S. Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center through Clemson University’s Virtual Prototyping of Ground Systems Center, Guo said. It will receive support from the National Science Foundation over the next three years, he said.

Hai Xiao, chair of the Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said the project exemplifies the innovative spirit fostered in the department.

“It’s a remarkable opportunity for our students to lead groundbreaking research on a global stage,” he said. “The team’s success reflects Clemson Elevate’s commitment to delivering the nation’s top student experience while driving forward-thinking research that addresses real-world challenges in cybersecurity and wireless communication.”