# Immunization of Pruning Attack in DNN Watermarking Using Constant Weight Code

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.02961 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02961/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 14 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jul 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis: Finding Sparse, Trainable Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.03635/) (2018)
- [Fine-Pruning: Defending Against Backdooring Attacks on Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.12185/) (2018)
- [Identifying and attacking the saddle point problem in high-dimensional non-convex optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2572/) (2014)
- [The Loss Surfaces of Multilayer Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.0233/) (2014)
- [Embedding Watermarks into Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.04082/) (2017)
- [Digital Watermarking for Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02601/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Copyright Protection for Large Language Models: A Survey of Methods, Challenges, and Trends](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.11548/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

To ensure protection of the intellectual property rights of DNN models, watermarking techniques have been investigated to insert side-information into the models without seriously degrading the performance of original task. One of the threats for the DNN watermarking is the pruning attack such that less important neurons in the model are pruned to make it faster and more compact as well as to remove the watermark. In this study, we investigate a channel coding approach to resist the pruning attack. As the channel model is completely different from conventional models like digital images, it has been an open problem what kind of encoding method is suitable for DNN watermarking. A novel encoding approach by using constant weight codes to immunize the effects of pruning attacks is presented. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that introduces an encoding technique for DNN watermarking to make it robust against pruning attacks.