arXiv Machine Learning

Why Backdooring Neural Networks is so Easy?

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 28

Provable one-poison backdoor attacks on linear models and ReLU neural networks

The paper demonstrates that a single poisoned data point can successfully create a backdoor in linear models and ReLU neural networks without needing detailed knowledge of the training data. It establishes provable conditions under which this one‑poison attack works with high probability, achieving zero backdooring error while leaving the model’s normal performance largely unaffected. The attack relies only on coarse geometric bounds of the input space and training parameters.

By Thorsten Peinemann, Paula Arnold, Sebastian Berndt, Thomas Eisenbarth, Esfandiar Mohammadi
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 29

ToxScreen: Detecting Whether an LLM Has Been Poisoned

As large language models (LLMs) are deployed in high-stakes domains, adversaries may poison training data to implant backdoors: hidden triggers that covertly manipulate model behavior at inference time. We ask whether a defender can recover such a trigger under realistic affordances, namely white-box access to the weights and knowledge of the behavior of concern, but no training data, no trusted reference model, no knowledge of the trigger, and no certainty that the model is poisoned.

arXiv AI
Sep 2

Does Reasoning Mitigate Backdoor Attacks? A Neuro-Symbolic Perspective

The paper investigates whether neuro‑symbolic (NeSy) AI models, which combine neural perception with symbolic reasoning, can mitigate backdoor attacks. It presents a systematic evaluation comparing the NeSy framework DeepProbLog to baseline neural networks across eight backdoor settings and four reasoning tasks. Results indicate that NeSy models are generally more robust than pure neural models, but their resilience depends heavily on how strictly the reasoning process is enforced and its alignment with the attack target.

By Marco Antonio Corallo, Andrea Agiollo, Mauro Conti, Alberto Giaretta
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 7

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Learning the Backdoor to Remove the Backdoor

The community has recently developed various training-time defenses to counter neural backdoors introduced through data poisoning. In light of the observation that a model learns poisonous samples responsible for the backdoor easier than benign samples, these approaches either use a fixed threshold of the training loss for splitting or iteratively learn a reference model as an oracle for identifying benign samples.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 30

ToxScreen: Detecting Whether an LLM Has Been Poisoned

arXiv:2607. 26849v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As large language models (LLMs) are deployed in high-stakes domains, adversaries may poison training data to implant backdoors: hidden triggers that covertly manipulate model behavior at inference time.

By Anthony Hughes, Nicole Xing, Collin Francel, Andy Kim, Andrew Draganov