# GraphAttacker: A General Multi-Task GraphAttack Framework

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.06855 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06855/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 51 of its 95 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jan 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [node2vec: Scalable Feature Learning for Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00653/) (2016)
- [DeepWalk: Online Learning of Social Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1403.6652/) (2014)
- [Variational Graph Auto-Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07308/) (2016)
- [Strategies for Pre-training Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12265/) (2019)
- [Hierarchical Graph Representation Learning with Differentiable Pooling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.08804/) (2018)
- [FastGCN: Fast Learning with Graph Convolutional Networks via Importance Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.10247/) (2018)
- [LINE: Large-scale Information Network Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03578/) (2015)
- [EvolveGCN: Evolving Graph Convolutional Networks for Dynamic Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.10191/) (2019)
- [Self-Attention Graph Pooling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08082/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Attacks on Neural Networks for Graph Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.07984/) (2018)
- [Graph Structure Learning for Robust Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.10203/) (2020)
- [Adversarial Attack on Graph Structured Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.02371/) (2018)
- [Adversarial Attacks on Graph Neural Networks via Meta Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.08412/) (2019)
- [GNNGuard: Defending Graph Neural Networks against Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08149/) (2020)
- [Backdoor Attacks to Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11165/) (2020)
- [GraphGAN: Graph Representation Learning with Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08267/) (2017)
- [AM-GCN: Adaptive Multi-channel Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02265/) (2020)
- [Graph Backdoor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11890/) (2020)
- [Billion-scale Commodity Embedding for E-commerce Recommendation in Alibaba](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.02349/) (2018)
- [PTE: Predictive Text Embedding through Large-scale Heterogeneous Text Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1508.00200/) (2015)
- [Graph Adversarial Training: Dynamically Regularizing Based on Graph Structure](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.08226/) (2019)
- [Hiding Individuals and Communities in a Social Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.00375/) (2016)
- [Towards More Practical Adversarial Attacks on Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05057/) (2020)
- [A Restricted Black-box Adversarial Framework Towards Attacking Graph Embedding Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.01297/) (2019)
- [Fast Gradient Attack on Network Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02797/) (2018)
- [Certifiable Robustness to Graph Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.14356/) (2019)
- [Transferring Robustness for Graph Neural Network Against Poisoning Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07558/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Motif-Backdoor: Rethinking the Backdoor Attack on Graph Neural Networks via Motifs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13710/) (2022)
- [Revisiting Adversarial Attacks on Graph Neural Networks for Graph Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.06651/) (2022)
- [Beyond Boundaries: A Comprehensive Survey of Transferable Attacks on AI Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11796/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Attacks on Graph Classification via Bayesian Optimisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02842/) (2021)
- [Task and Model Agnostic Adversarial Attack on Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.13267/) (2021)
- [Multi-Instance Adversarial Attack on GNN-Based Malicious Domain Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11754/) (2023)
- [Attacking the Loop: Adversarial Attacks on Graph-based Loop Closure Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06991/) (2023)
- [Query-Efficient Adversarial Attack Against Vertical Federated Graph Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02809/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have been successfully exploited in graph analysis tasks in many real-world applications. The competition between attack and defense methods also enhances the robustness of GNNs. In this competition, the development of adversarial training methods put forward higher requirement for the diversity of attack examples. By contrast, most attack methods with specific attack strategies are difficult to satisfy such a requirement. To address this problem, we propose GraphAttacker, a novel generic graph attack framework that can flexibly adjust the structures and the attack strategies according to the graph analysis tasks. GraphAttacker generates adversarial examples through alternate training on three key components: the multi-strategy attack generator (MAG), the similarity discriminator (SD), and the attack discriminator (AD), based on the generative adversarial network (GAN). Furthermore, we introduce a novel similarity modification rate SMR to conduct a stealthier attack considering the change of node similarity distribution. Experiments on various benchmark datasets demonstrate that GraphAttacker can achieve state-of-the-art attack performance on graph analysis tasks of node classification, graph classification, and link prediction, no matter the adversarial training is conducted or not. Moreover, we also analyze the unique characteristics of each task and their specific response in the unified attack framework. The project code is available at https://github.com/honoluluuuu/GraphAttacker.