The unprecedented success of deep neural networks in various applications have made these networks a prime target for adversarial exploitation. In this paper, we introduce a benchmark technique for detecting backdoor attacks (aka Trojan attacks) on deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs). We introduce the concept of Universal Litmus Patterns (ULPs), which enable one to reveal backdoor attacks by feeding these universal patterns to the network and analyzing the output (i.e., classifying as clean' or corrupted'). This detection is fast because it requires only a few forward passes through a CNN. We demonstrate the effectiveness of ULPs for detecting backdoor attacks on thousands of networks trained on three benchmark datasets, namely the German Traffic Sign Recognition Benchmark (GTSRB), MNIST, and CIFAR10.
@cite_22: While machine learning (ML) models are being increasingly trusted to make decisions in different and varying areas, the safety of systems using such models has become an increasing concern. In particular, ML models are often trained on data from potentially untrustworthy sources, providing adversaries with the opportunity to manipulate them by inserting carefully crafted samples into the training set. Recent work has shown that this type of attack, called a poisoning attack, allows adversaries to insert backdoors or trojans into the model, enabling malicious behavior with simple external backdoor triggers at inference time and only a blackbox perspective of the model itself. Detecting this type of attack is challenging because the unexpected behavior occurs only when a backdoor trigger, which is known only to the adversary, is present. Model users, either direct users of training data or users of pre-trained model from a catalog, may not guarantee the safe operation of their ML-based system. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to backdoor detection and removal for neural networks. Through extensive experimental results, we demonstrate its effectiveness for neural networks classifying text and images. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first methodology capable of detecting poisonous data crafted to insert backdoors and repairing the model that does not require a verified and trusted dataset.
@cite_22 follows the rationale that the neural activations for clean target samples rely on features that the network has learned from the target class. However, these activations for a backdoor triggered sample (i.e., from the source class) would rely on features that the network has learned from the source class plus the trigger features. The authors then leverage this difference in detection mechanism and perform clustering analysis on neural activations of the network to detect infected samples.