# ByzSecAgg: A Byzantine-Resistant Secure Aggregation Scheme for Federated Learning Based on Coded Computing and Vector Commitment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.09913 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.09913/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 70 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Feb 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Going Deeper with Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.4842/) (2014)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning: Challenges, Methods, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07873/) (2019)
- [Deep Leakage from Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08935/) (2019)
- [How To Backdoor Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.00459/) (2018)
- [Inverting Gradients -- How easy is it to break privacy in federated learning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.14053/) (2020)
- [Byzantine-Robust Distributed Learning: Towards Optimal Statistical Rates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.01498/) (2018)
- [Local Model Poisoning Attacks to Byzantine-Robust Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11815/) (2019)
- [Deep Learning with Limited Numerical Precision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.02551/) (2015)
- [The Hidden Vulnerability of Distributed Learning in Byzantium](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07927/) (2018)
- [Attack of the Tails: Yes, You Really Can Backdoor Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05084/) (2020)
- [Privacy and Robustness in Federated Learning: Attacks and Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.06337/) (2020)
- [Mitigating Sybils in Federated Learning Poisoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.04866/) (2018)
- [Fall of Empires: Breaking Byzantine-tolerant SGD by Inner Product Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03936/) (2019)
- [Byzantine-Resilient Secure Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11115/) (2020)
- [Turbo-Aggregate: Breaking the Quadratic Aggregation Barrier in Secure Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.04156/) (2020)
- [Speeding Up Distributed Machine Learning Using Codes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02673/) (2015)
- [Lagrange Coded Computing: Optimal Design for Resiliency, Security and Privacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00939/) (2018)
- [LightSecAgg: a Lightweight and Versatile Design for Secure Aggregation in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.14236/) (2021)
- [Zeno++: Robust Fully Asynchronous SGD](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07020/) (2019)
- [Polynomial Codes: an Optimal Design for High-Dimensional Coded Matrix Multiplication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.10464/) (2017)
- [On the Optimal Recovery Threshold of Coded Matrix Multiplication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.10292/) (2018)
- [CodedPaddedFL and CodedSecAgg: Straggler Mitigation and Secure Aggregation in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08909/) (2021)
- [Information Theoretic Secure Aggregation with User Dropouts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07750/) (2021)
- [Communication-Computation Efficient Secure Aggregation for Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05433/) (2020)
- [SwiftAgg+: Achieving Asymptotically Optimal Communication Loads in Secure Aggregation for Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13060/) (2022)
- [CodedSketch: A Coding Scheme for Distributed Computation of Approximated Matrix Multiplication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.10460/) (2018)
- [SwiftAgg: Communication-Efficient and Dropout-Resistant Secure Aggregation for Federated Learning with Worst-Case Security Guarantees](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.04169/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Perfect Privacy for Discriminator-Based Byzantine-Resilient Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13561/) (2025)
- [Private Aggregation for Byzantine-Resilient Heterogeneous Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09870/) (2025)
- [Beyond Trade-offs: A Unified Framework for Privacy, Robustness, and Communication Efficiency in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12978/) (2025)
- [Information-Theoretically Secure Aggregation for Lightweight Federated Learning: Resilient to Dropouts and Adversaries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.20890/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we propose ByzSecAgg, an efficient secure aggregation scheme for federated learning that is resistant to Byzantine attacks and privacy leakages. Processing individual updates to manage adversarial behavior, while preserving the privacy of the data against colluding nodes, requires some sort of secure secret sharing. However, the communication load for secret sharing of long vectors of updates can be very high. In federated settings, where users are often edge devices with potential bandwidth constraints, excessive communication overhead is undesirable. ByzSecAgg solves this problem by partitioning local updates into smaller sub-vectors and sharing them using ramp secret sharing. However, this sharing method does not admit bilinear computations, such as pairwise distances calculations, which are needed for distance-based outlier-detection algorithms, and effective methods for mitigating Byzantine attacks. To overcome this issue, each user runs another round of ramp sharing, with a different embedding of the data in the sharing polynomial. This technique, motivated by ideas from coded computing, enables secure computation of pairwise distance. In addition, to maintain the integrity and privacy of the local update, ByzSecAgg also uses a vector commitment method, in which the commitment size remains constant (i.e., does not increase with the length of the local update), while simultaneously allowing verification of the secret sharing process. In terms of communication load, ByzSecAgg significantly outperforms the related baseline scheme, known as BREA.