# RFLA: A Stealthy Reflected Light Adversarial Attack in the Physical World

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07653 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07653/

## Key facts

- Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Jul 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6572/) (2014)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [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)
- [Wide Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.07146/) (2016)
- [Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.04644/) (2016)
- [Aggregated Residual Transformations for Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05431/) (2016)
- [Adversarial examples in the physical world](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.02533/) (2016)
- [Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07261/) (2016)
- [SqueezeNet: AlexNet-level accuracy with 50x fewer parameters and <0.5MB model size](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07360/) (2016)
- [Adversarial Machine Learning at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01236/) (2016)
- [Ensemble Adversarial Training: Attacks and Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07204/) (2017)
- [Square Attack: a query-efficient black-box adversarial attack via random search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00049/) (2019)
- [Improving Transferability of Adversarial Examples with Input Diversity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.06978/) (2018)
- [Countering Adversarial Images using Input Transformations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00117/) (2017)
- [Evading Defenses to Transferable Adversarial Examples by Translation-Invariant Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.02884/) (2019)
- [Nesterov Accelerated Gradient and Scale Invariance for Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06281/) (2019)
- [Fooling automated surveillance cameras: adversarial patches to attack person detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08653/) (2019)
- [Dual Attention Suppression Attack: Generate Adversarial Camouflage in Physical World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01050/) (2021)
- [Shadows can be Dangerous: Stealthy and Effective Physical-world Adversarial Attack by Natural Phenomenon](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03818/) (2022)
- [Feature Distillation: DNN-Oriented JPEG Compression Against Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05787/) (2018)
- [Adversarial Sticker: A Stealthy Attack Method in the Physical World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06728/) (2021)
- [A General Framework for Adversarial Examples with Objectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.00349/) (2017)
- [GenAttack: Practical Black-box Attacks with Gradient-Free Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.11090/) (2018)
- [Adversarial Laser Beam: Effective Physical-World Attack to DNNs in a Blink](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06504/) (2021)
- [FCA: Learning a 3D Full-coverage Vehicle Camouflage for Multi-view Physical Adversarial Attack](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07193/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Breaking Barriers in Physical-World Adversarial Examples: Improving Robustness and Transferability via Robust Feature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16958/) (2024)
- [Diffusion to Confusion: Naturalistic Adversarial Patch Generation Based on Diffusion Model for Object Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08076/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Examples in the Physical World: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01473/) (2023)
- [UV-Attack: Physical-World Adversarial Attacks for Person Detection via Dynamic-NeRF-based UV Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05783/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Impersonation and Dodging Attacks on Face Recognition Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08903/) (2024)
- [Machine Learning Robustness: A Primer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00897/) (2024)
- [Improving the Transferability of Adversarial Examples by Feature Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06714/) (2024)
- [Embodied Laser Attack:Leveraging Scene Priors to Achieve Agent-based Robust Non-contact Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09554/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Attacks on Both Face Recognition and Face Anti-spoofing Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16940/) (2024)
- [Secure Traffic Sign Recognition: An Attention-Enabled Universal Image Inpainting Mechanism against Light Patch Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04133/) (2024)
- [Improving the Transferability of Adversarial Attacks on Face Recognition with Diverse Parameters Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15555/) (2024)
- [Beyond Vulnerabilities: A Survey of Adversarial Attacks as Both Threats and Defenses in Computer Vision Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01845/) (2025)
- [Out-of-Bounding-Box Triggers: A Stealthy Approach to Cheat Object Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10091/) (2024)
- [Rethinking the Threat and Accessibility of Adversarial Attacks against Face Recognition Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08514/) (2024)
- [SABER: Spatially Consistent 3D Universal Adversarial Objects for BEV Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22499/) (2025)
- [Universal Perturbation-based Secret Key-Controlled Data Hiding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01696/) (2023)
- [Universal Multi-view Black-box Attack against Object Detectors via Layout Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06688/) (2024)
- [Adversarial Wear and Tear: Exploiting Natural Damage for Generating Physical-World Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21164/) (2025)
- [When Surfaces Lie: Exploiting Wrinkle-Induced Attention Shift to Attack Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27759/) (2026)
- [Challenging Vision-Language Models with Physically Deployable Multimodal Semantic Lighting Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12833/) (2026)
- [Scratched Lenses, Shifted Depth: Passive Camera-Side Optical Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.14504/) (2026)
- [Physically Real-time Infrared Attack against Optical Flow Estimation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.26651/) (2026)
- [ColorFD: A Finite-Difference Guided Black-Box Physical Adversarial Attack for Remote Sensing Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.04559/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Physical adversarial attacks against deep neural networks (DNNs) have recently gained increasing attention. The current mainstream physical attacks use printed adversarial patches or camouflage to alter the appearance of the target object. However, these approaches generate conspicuous adversarial patterns that show poor stealthiness. Another physical deployable attack is the optical attack, featuring stealthiness while exhibiting weakly in the daytime with sunlight. In this paper, we propose a novel Reflected Light Attack (RFLA), featuring effective and stealthy in both the digital and physical world, which is implemented by placing the color transparent plastic sheet and a paper cut of a specific shape in front of the mirror to create different colored geometries on the target object. To achieve these goals, we devise a general framework based on the circle to model the reflected light on the target object. Specifically, we optimize a circle (composed of a coordinate and radius) to carry various geometrical shapes determined by the optimized angle. The fill color of the geometry shape and its corresponding transparency are also optimized. We extensively evaluate the effectiveness of RFLA on different datasets and models. Experiment results suggest that the proposed method achieves over 99% success rate on different datasets and models in the digital world. Additionally, we verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in different physical environments by using sunlight or a flashlight.