arXiv Machine Learning

Intellectual Property Protection of Hyperdimensional Computing Classifiers: Black-Box Ownership Verification via Model Watermarking

The paper investigates model watermarking for hyperdimensional computing (HDC) classifiers, adapting backdoor-based embedding to three prototype‑learning mechanisms. Across four benchmarks, error‑driven models (AdaptHD and OnlineHD) support ownership verification with minimal accuracy loss, while single‑pass Vanilla HDC requires higher trigger exposure and incurs larger accuracy penalties. The study also shows that watermarks can be overwritten, survive certain stress tests on FPGA, but may be lost during extraction or severe stress, highlighting both feasibility and limitations of HDC watermarking.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 27

MeMark: Membrane-Space Watermarking for Spiking Neural Networks

MeMark introduces a watermarking scheme for Spiking Neural Networks that embeds a multi‑bit identifier directly into the membrane state of selected Leaky Integrate‑and‑Fire neurons, rather than in the output head. The watermark is recoverable by comparing neuron firing thresholds, eliminating the need for a learned decoder. Experiments on various SNN architectures—including a 215.4M‑parameter SpikeGPT checkpoint—show that all 20 independent 64‑bit keys reliably pass verification under a 51/64 rule, remain robust after fine‑tuning, pruning, quantization, and output‑head replacement, and are not recovered by random keys or adaptive attacks within the tested threat model.

By Roberto Ria\~no, Gorka Abad, Stjepan Picek, Aitor Urbieta
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

CertDW: Towards Certified Dataset Ownership Verification via Conformal Calibration

The paper introduces CertDW, a certified dataset watermark and ownership verification method that remains reliable even under malicious perturbations. By leveraging conformal prediction, it defines two statistical measures—principal probability (PP) and watermark robustness (WR)—to evaluate model stability on benign versus watermarked samples. The authors derive certification conditions linking WR to a PP-based threshold and provide a high‑probability bound on false positives, enabling robust ownership verification when a suspicious model’s WR exceeds the PP values of benign models.

By Ting Qiao, Yiming Li, Jianbin Li, Yingjia Wang, Leyi Qi, Junfeng Guo, Ruili Feng, Dacheng Tao
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 23

MarkTune: Improving the Quality-Detectability Trade-off in Model-Embedded LLM Watermarking

MarkTune is a model‑embedded watermarking framework that improves the trade‑off between generation quality and detectability. By regularizing toward a high‑quality reference distribution, it decouples quality preservation from proximity to the base model and uses the GaussMark detection statistic as a reward during on‑policy fine‑tuning. Empirical results show that MarkTune enhances the quality‑detectability frontier, maintains downstream task performance, and remains robust against text‑editing and open‑weight attacks across diverse datasets.

By Yizhou Zhao, Zhiwei Steven Wu, Adam Block
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 7

A Robust Watermark-based Fingerprint Framework for GNNs Ownership Verification

The paper introduces REMARK, a watermark‑based fingerprint framework designed to verify ownership of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). REMARK generates in‑distribution watermark graphs that maximize output differences between GNN models, thereby reducing performance loss from out‑of‑distribution watermarks. It then extracts robust fingerprints from these output differences, eliminating the need for surrogate models trained on watermark data or reliance on specific output levels, and achieves state‑of‑the‑art verification accuracy across real‑world datasets and GNN architectures.

By Han Zhang, Yan Wang, Guanfeng Liu, Pengfei Ding, Huaxiong Wang, Kwok-Yan Lam
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 28

FeatMark: Feature-level Watermark Protection against Mimicry Attacks with Diffusion Models

FeatMark is a watermarking framework that protects images from text‑to‑image diffusion model mimicry attacks by embedding small, scene‑consistent micro‑features instead of pixel‑level perturbations. It constructs domain‑specific feature banks, selects executable features, and injects them via mask‑guided concept editing to create highly localized, natural edits. Experiments on VGGFace2, CelebA‑HQ, and WikiArt show FeatMark remains robust against ten strong watermark removal attacks and several adaptive attacks, with minimal impact on perceptual quality and extending to video mimicry scenarios.

By Haoyang Li, Ruoxi Sun, Qingqing Ye, Benjamin Zi Hao Zhao, Yaxin Xiao, Jason Xue, Haibo Hu