# Detecting Topology Attacks against Graph Neural Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.10072 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10072/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Apr 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Simplifying Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07153/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Attacks on Neural Networks for Graph Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.07984/) (2018)
- [Deep Learning on Graphs: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04202/) (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)
- [Graph Neural Networks with Heterophily](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13566/) (2020)
- [Topology Attack and Defense for Graph Neural Networks: An Optimization Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04214/) (2019)
- [GNNGuard: Defending Graph Neural Networks against Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08149/) (2020)
- [Hiding Individuals and Communities in a Social Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.00375/) (2016)
- [A Restricted Black-box Adversarial Framework Towards Attacking Graph Embedding Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.01297/) (2019)
- [TDGIA:Effective Injection Attacks on Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06663/) (2021)
- [Elastic Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06996/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Certified Robustness of Graph Neural Networks against Adversarial Structural Perturbation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.10715/) (2020)
- [Understanding Structural Vulnerability in Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06280/) (2021)
- [Scalable Anomaly Ranking of Attributed Neighborhoods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1601.06711/) (2016)

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

- [Resilient Temporal GCN for Smart Grid State Estimation Under Topology Inaccuracies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16008/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have been widely used in many real applications, and recent studies have revealed their vulnerabilities against topology attacks. To address this issue, existing efforts have mainly been dedicated to improving the robustness of GNNs, while little attention has been paid to the detection of such attacks. In this work, we study the victim node detection problem under topology attacks against GNNs. Our approach is built upon the key observation rooted in the intrinsic message passing nature of GNNs. That is, the neighborhood of a victim node tends to have two competing group forces, pushing the node classification results towards the original label and the targeted label, respectively. Based on this observation, we propose to detect victim nodes by deliberately designing an effective measurement of the neighborhood variance for each node. Extensive experimental results on four real-world datasets and five existing topology attacks show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed detection approach.