Imperceptible Backdoor Attack: From Input Space to Feature Representation

Abstract

Backdoor attacks are rapidly emerging threats to deep neural networks (DNNs). In the backdoor attack scenario, attackers usually implant the backdoor into the target model by manipulating the training dataset or training process. Then, the compromised model behaves normally for benign input yet makes mistakes when the pre-defined trigger appears. In this paper, we analyze the drawbacks of existing attack approaches and propose a novel imperceptible backdoor attack. We treat the trigger pattern as a special kind of noise following a multinomial distribution. A U-net-based network is employed to generate concrete parameters of multinomial distribution for each benign input. This elaborated trigger ensures that our approach is invisible to both humans and statistical detection. Besides the design of the trigger, we also consider the robustness of our approach against model diagnose-based defences. We force the feature representation of malicious input stamped with the trigger to be entangled with the benign one. We demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness against multiple state-of-the-art defences through extensive datasets and networks. Our trigger only modifies less than 1\% pixels of a benign image while the modification magnitude is 1. Our source code is available at https://github.com/Ekko-zn/IJCAI2022-Backdoor.