# Amplification trojan network: Attack deep neural networks by amplifying their inherent weakness

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.17688 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17688/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 May 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6572/) (2014)
- [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)
- [Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.04644/) (2016)
- [Adversarial examples in the physical world](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.02533/) (2016)
- [DeepFool: a simple and accurate method to fool deep neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.04599/) (2015)
- [BadNets: Identifying Vulnerabilities in the Machine Learning Model Supply Chain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06733/) (2017)
- [The Limitations of Deep Learning in Adversarial Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07528/) (2015)
- [Deep Neural Networks are Easily Fooled: High Confidence Predictions for Unrecognizable Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.1897/) (2014)
- [Fast is better than free: Revisiting adversarial training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.03994/) (2020)
- [Poison Frogs! Targeted Clean-Label Poisoning Attacks on Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00792/) (2018)
- [Hidden Trigger Backdoor Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.00033/) (2019)
- [Defense against Adversarial Attacks Using High-Level Representation Guided Denoiser](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.02976/) (2017)
- [An Embarrassingly Simple Approach for Trojan Attack in Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08131/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent works found that deep neural networks (DNNs) can be fooled by adversarial examples, which are crafted by adding adversarial noise on clean inputs. The accuracy of DNNs on adversarial examples will decrease as the magnitude of the adversarial noise increase. In this study, we show that DNNs can be also fooled when the noise is very small under certain circumstances. This new type of attack is called Amplification Trojan Attack (ATAttack). Specifically, we use a trojan network to transform the inputs before sending them to the target DNN. This trojan network serves as an amplifier to amplify the inherent weakness of the target DNN. The target DNN, which is infected by the trojan network, performs normally on clean data while being more vulnerable to adversarial examples. Since it only transforms the inputs, the trojan network can hide in DNN-based pipelines, e.g. by infecting the pre-processing procedure of the inputs before sending them to the DNNs. This new type of threat should be considered in developing safe DNNs.