arXiv AI

Optimizing Byzantine Node Placement in Decentralized Federated Learning

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.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 25

BRFID: Toward Byzantine-Robust Federated Intrusion Detection

The paper investigates the effects of label‑flipping poisoning attacks in a three‑client federated intrusion detection system (IDS) trained on CICIDS2017 with non‑IID attack subtype distributions. Flipping 60% of training labels from a single Byzantine client reduces the attacker’s own detection accuracy from 99.96% to 84.33%, while the federated global ensemble remains stable across all tested poison rates. The study shows that the self‑compromise signal can be detected as an anomaly, enabling Byzantine client identification without target data exfiltration, and notes that the current aggregation uses a Federated Forest rather than FedAvg, with future work planned to extend to parametric classifiers.

By Asmah Muallem, Firdous Kausar, Sajid Hussain, Lei Qian
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 26

SketchGuard: Scaling Byzantine-Robust Decentralized Federated Learning via Sketch-Based Screening

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.

By Murtaza Rangwala, Farag Azzedin, Richard O. Sinnott, Rajkumar Buyya
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 4

A Nesterov-Accelerated Byzantine-Robust Federated Learning

The paper proposes Byrd-NAFL, a Byzantine‑robust federated learning algorithm that incorporates Nesterov’s momentum and resilient aggregation rules. It achieves fast and safe convergence under non‑convex, smooth loss functions with relaxed gradient assumptions, and provides a finite‑time convergence guarantee. Experiments show that Byrd-NAFL outperforms existing methods in convergence speed, accuracy, and resilience to various malicious attacks.

By Lihan Xu, Xiaoyi Fan, Gang Wang, Runhao Zeng, Xiping Hu, Yanjie Dong
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 27

Rethinking the Transferable Adversarial Attacks and Robust Defense in Federated Learning

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.

By Zuobin Xiong, Deval Mukherjee, Homook Cho, Wei Li
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 18

Automated Byzantine-Resilient Clustered Decentralized Federated Learning for Battery Intelligence in Connected EVs

arXiv:2605. 21115v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a promising paradigm for managing electric vehicle (EV) battery data in intelligent transportation systems (ITS), enabling privacy-preserving tasks such as anomaly detection and capacity estimation.

By Mouhamed Amine Bouchiha, Abdelaziz Amara Korba, Yacine Ghamri-Doudane
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 10

Communication-Efficient Byzantine-Robust Federated Conformal Prediction via Partial Model Sharing

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.

By Ehsan Lari, Reza Arablouei, Stefan Werner