arXiv Machine Learning
4d ago

Can Subgraph Explanations Be Weaponized to Steal Graph Neural Networks?

Graph Machine Learning as a Service platforms now offer explainability interfaces to satisfy regulatory transparency, but this transparency can be exploited. The paper introduces a novel model extraction attack for graph classification that operates under strict black‑box constraints, using only discrete class labels and binary explanation masks. The method guides Monte Carlo edge sensitivity estimation toward decision boundaries with Hoeffding guarantees and narrows the search space using explanation subgraphs, outperforming comparable baselines on benchmark datasets.

By Ojas Nimase, Jiate Li, Yue Zhao, Yushun Dong
arXiv AI
Aug 17

Overcoming Shortcut Learning in Graph Neural Networks through Active Explanation Guidance

arXiv:2608. 14121v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) can solve prediction tasks by unintentionally exploiting shortcuts---that is, edges, nodes, and features that correlate with but are not causal for the prediction---which compromise their reliability in out-of-distribution tasks.

By Taraneh Younesian, Steve Azzolin, Antonio Longa, Francesco Ferrini, Vincenzo Marco De Luca, Stefano Teso