# ObjectSeeker: Certifiably Robust Object Detection against Patch Hiding Attacks via Patch-agnostic Masking

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.01811 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.01811/

## Key facts

- Cited by 22 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 58 of its 90 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Feb 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 58)

- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6572/) (2014)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Towards Deep Learning Models Resistant to Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.06083/) (2017)
- [Intriguing properties of neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6199/) (2013)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.04644/) (2016)
- [YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02767/) (2018)
- [YOLOv4: Optimal Speed and Accuracy of Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10934/) (2020)
- [YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08242/) (2016)
- [Certified Adversarial Robustness via Randomized Smoothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.02918/) (2019)
- [Obfuscated Gradients Give a False Sense of Security: Circumventing Defenses to Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00420/) (2018)
- [EfficientDet: Scalable and Efficient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09070/) (2019)
- [The Limitations of Deep Learning in Adversarial Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07528/) (2015)
- [Focal Loss for Dense Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.02002/) (2017)
- [Evasion Attacks against Machine Learning at Test Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06131/) (2017)
- [Distillation as a Defense to Adversarial Perturbations against Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.04508/) (2015)
- [Provable defenses against adversarial examples via the convex outer adversarial polytope](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00851/) (2017)
- [On Adaptive Attacks to Adversarial Example Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08347/) (2020)
- [Adversarial Examples Are Not Easily Detected: Bypassing Ten Detection Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07263/) (2017)
- [Adversarial Patch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.09665/) (2017)
- [Certified Robustness to Adversarial Examples with Differential Privacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03471/) (2018)
- [On Evaluating Adversarial Robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06705/) (2019)
- [Provably Robust Deep Learning via Adversarially Trained Smoothed Classifiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04584/) (2019)
- [Certified Defenses against Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09344/) (2018)
- [MagNet: a Two-Pronged Defense against Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09064/) (2017)
- [Fooling automated surveillance cameras: adversarial patches to attack person detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08653/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Certifiably Robust RAG against Retrieval Corruption](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15556/) (2024)
- [Does Physical Adversarial Example Really Matter to Autonomous Driving? Towards System-Level Effect of Adversarial Object Evasion Attack](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11894/) (2023)
- [PAD: Patch-Agnostic Defense against Adversarial Patch Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16452/) (2024)
- [Just Rotate it: Deploying Backdoor Attacks via Rotation Transformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10825/) (2022)
- [REAP: A Large-Scale Realistic Adversarial Patch Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05680/) (2022)
- [Certified Defences Against Adversarial Patch Attacks on Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.05980/) (2022)
- [PatchCURE: Improving Certifiable Robustness, Model Utility, and Computation Efficiency of Adversarial Patch Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.13076/) (2023)
- [ControlLoc: Physical-World Hijacking Attack on Visual Perception in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05810/) (2024)
- [I Don't Know You, But I Can Catch You: Real-Time Defense against Diverse Adversarial Patches for Object Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10285/) (2024)
- [Real-Time Robust Video Object Detection System Against Physical-World Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09195/) (2022)
- [Revisiting Adversarial Patch Defenses on Object Detectors: Unified Evaluation, Large-Scale Dataset, and New Insights](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00649/) (2025)
- [Online 3D Multi-Camera Perception through Robust 2D Tracking and Depth-based Late Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09946/) (2025)
- [Defending Object Detectors against Patch Attacks with Out-of-Distribution Smoothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.08989/) (2022)
- [Fight Fire with Fire: Combating Adversarial Patch Attacks using Pattern-randomized Defensive Patches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06122/) (2023)
- [A Survey of Adversarial Defenses in Vision-based Systems: Categorization, Methods and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00384/) (2025)
- [From Pixels to Trajectory: Universal Adversarial Example Detection via Temporal Imprints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04853/) (2025)
- [PatchDEMUX: A Certifiably Robust Framework for Multi-label Classifiers Against Adversarial Patches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24703/) (2025)
- [Robustness Analysis against Adversarial Patch Attacks in Fully Unmanned Stores](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08835/) (2025)
- [SpaNN: Detecting Multiple Adversarial Patches on CNNs by Spanning Saliency Thresholds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18591/) (2025)
- [DisPatch: Disarming Adversarial Patches in Object Detection with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.04597/) (2025)
- [AdROD: HyperNetwork-based Adversarially Robust Object Detection for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.16031/) (2026)
- [ARMOR: Manifold-Oriented Training for Adversarially Robust Aerial Object Detection under Data Scarcity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29510/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Object detectors, which are widely deployed in security-critical systems such as autonomous vehicles, have been found vulnerable to patch hiding attacks. An attacker can use a single physically-realizable adversarial patch to make the object detector miss the detection of victim objects and undermine the functionality of object detection applications. In this paper, we propose ObjectSeeker for certifiably robust object detection against patch hiding attacks. The key insight in ObjectSeeker is patch-agnostic masking: we aim to mask out the entire adversarial patch without knowing the shape, size, and location of the patch. This masking operation neutralizes the adversarial effect and allows any vanilla object detector to safely detect objects on the masked images. Remarkably, we can evaluate ObjectSeeker's robustness in a certifiable manner: we develop a certification procedure to formally determine if ObjectSeeker can detect certain objects against any white-box adaptive attack within the threat model, achieving certifiable robustness. Our experiments demonstrate a significant (~10%-40% absolute and ~2-6x relative) improvement in certifiable robustness over the prior work, as well as high clean performance (~1% drop compared with undefended models).