SketchGuard is a Byzantine‑robust decentralized federated learning method that separates neighbor screening from model aggregation by using a Count Sketch representation. The approach mitigates a vulnerability where an adaptive adversary can hide large perturbations in the sketch’s null space, by adopting a commit‑then‑sketch protocol that ensures the sketch seed is chosen only after model commitment. The authors prove convergence in both convex and non‑convex settings, demonstrate that SketchGuard achieves state‑of‑the‑art robustness against six attacks—including the adaptive null‑space attack—across various network topologies and data heterogeneity, while reducing per‑neighbor communication to a model‑dimension‑independent size.
arXiv:2608.21137v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Decentralized Federated Learning (DFL) promises trust-free collaborative learning by replacing the centralized parameter server with peer-to-peer model...
arXiv:2608. 06637v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Robust aggregation methods are widely used in federated learning to mitigate the impact of adversarial client behavior.
The paper investigates how the strategic placement of Byzantine nodes in decentralized federated learning (DFL) affects the propagation of malicious influence across the communication graph. It introduces Byzantine Placement Influence (BPI), a measure that captures cumulative exposure of honest nodes to Byzantine sources over time, and develops algorithms to optimize BPI across various network structures and attack types. Experiments demonstrate that BPI-guided placements consistently yield highly damaging configurations, highlighting the importance of considering node placement in DFL threat models.
The paper demonstrates that in decentralized federated learning, secure aggregation implemented through local neighborhood aggregation can leak private model updates. By exploiting the asymmetric aggregate views available to colluding semi‑honest nodes, the authors formulate the problem as a Hidden Subset Sum Problem and develop a lattice‑based reconstruction attack. Experiments on image, tabular, and text datasets show that attackers can recover honest participants’ updates and reconstruct private training data.
The paper investigates how adversarial examples transfer between client models in federated learning and explores the relationship between these examples and client data distributions. It proposes a defense strategy based on adversarial training that leverages the transferability of model robustness. Experiments on real-life datasets demonstrate that the new attack and defense methods outperform existing state‑of‑the‑art approaches.
FedLNS is a server‑side framework that screens federated learning updates by representing each client’s contribution through changes in trainable normalization‑layer parameters, creating lightweight signatures that can be compared against a history‑aware cross‑client reference. The method requires no extra client‑to‑server communication, raw data, or labeled attack examples, and after screening, the remaining full‑model updates are aggregated with standard federated learning rules. Experiments on GPT‑style, BERT‑style, and LLaMA‑style models with 200 clients demonstrate that FedLNS achieves lower test perplexity than six baselines even when 40% of the population performs target manipulation under both IID and non‑IID data partitions.
arXiv:2602. 18396v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We propose PRISM-FCP (Partial shaRing and robust calIbration with Statistical Margins for Federated Conformal Prediction), a communication-efficient Byzantine-robust federated conformal prediction framework that uses partial model sharing to mitigate stochastic model-poisoning attacks during training and histogram-based filtering to mitigate adversarial calibration submissions.
arXiv:2607. 02187v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Distributed machine learning enables collaborative model training without centralizing data, but it also exposes learning processes to privacy leakage and malicious manipulation.
arXiv:2610.20264v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Client-level fair federated learning, in the form of $q$-fair federated learning ($q$-FFL), agnostic federated learning, or tilted empirical risk minim...
The paper introduces FGLGuard, a privacy‑preserving federated graph learning framework that trains a graph attention detector on each operator’s own multi‑agent system (MAS) episode graphs, sharing only model updates. By combining a proximal local objective, domain‑balanced aggregation, threshold calibration, and guarded rewrite mechanisms, FGLGuard adapts to non‑IID data across organizations and outperforms centralized and local‑only baselines on Agent‑SafetyBench, R‑Judge, and AgentDojo. The method achieves significant reductions in attack success rates—up to 43% on AgentDojo—without compromising utility, API cost, or model capability.
arXiv:2609.07312v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper proposes a robust decentralized personalized federated learning method R-DPFL, that enables clients to reduce the impact of Byzantine attack...
arXiv:2606. 19129v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Dealing simultaneously with confidentiality and Byzantine behaviors in decentralized learning is a challenging problem.