# Adversarial Robust Memory-Based Continual Learner

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.17608 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17608/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Nov 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [Learning without Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09282/) (2016)
- [Theoretically Principled Trade-off between Robustness and Accuracy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08573/) (2019)
- [Progressive Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04671/) (2016)
- [Continual Lifelong Learning with Neural Networks: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07569/) (2018)
- [Obfuscated Gradients Give a False Sense of Security: Circumventing Defenses to Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00420/) (2018)
- [Learning to Prompt for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08654/) (2021)
- [Dark Experience for General Continual Learning: a Strong, Simple Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07211/) (2020)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Continual Learning: Theory, Method and Application](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00487/) (2023)
- [Riemannian Walk for Incremental Learning: Understanding Forgetting and Intransigence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.10112/) (2018)
- [RobustBench: a standardized adversarial robustness benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.09670/) (2020)
- [Gradient based sample selection for online continual learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08671/) (2019)
- [Threat of Adversarial Attacks on Deep Learning in Computer Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.00553/) (2018)
- [On Tiny Episodic Memories in Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.10486/) (2019)
- [DyTox: Transformers for Continual Learning with DYnamic TOken eXpansion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11326/) (2021)
- [Recent Advances in Adversarial Training for Adversarial Robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.01356/) (2021)
- [New Insights on Reducing Abrupt Representation Change in Online Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05025/) (2021)
- [Class-Incremental Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03648/) (2023)
- [Better Diffusion Models Further Improve Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04638/) (2023)
- [Bag of Tricks for Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.00467/) (2020)
- [Geometry-aware Instance-reweighted Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.01736/) (2020)
- [Towards Robust Evaluations of Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.09733/) (2018)
- [Scalable and Order-robust Continual Learning with Additive Parameter Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09432/) (2019)
- [Class-Incremental Continual Learning into the eXtended DER-verse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.00766/) (2022)
- [Robustness and Accuracy Could Be Reconcilable by (Proper) Definition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.10103/) (2022)
- [RayS: A Ray Searching Method for Hard-label Adversarial Attack](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.12792/) (2020)
- [Learnable Boundary Guided Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.11164/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Mitigating the Backdoor Effect for Multi-Task Model Merging via Safety-Aware Subspace](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13910/) (2024)
- [Improving Data-aware and Parameter-aware Robustness for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17054/) (2024)
- [On Understanding of the Dynamics of Model Capacity in Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08052/) (2025)
- [Streaming Adversarial Robustness in Fuzzy ARTMAP: Mechanism-Aligned Evaluation, Progressive Training, and Interpretable Diagnostics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06902/) (2026)
- [Robust Dynamic Expansion for Continual Learning under Backdoor Attacks via Purification and Selective Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06346/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Despite the remarkable advances that have been made in continual learning, the adversarial vulnerability of such methods has not been fully discussed. We delve into the adversarial robustness of memory-based continual learning algorithms and observe limited robustness improvement by directly applying adversarial training techniques. Preliminary studies reveal the twin challenges for building adversarial robust continual learners: accelerated forgetting in continual learning and gradient obfuscation in adversarial robustness. In this study, we put forward a novel adversarial robust memory-based continual learner that adjusts data logits to mitigate the forgetting of pasts caused by adversarial samples. Furthermore, we devise a gradient-based data selection mechanism to overcome the gradient obfuscation caused by limited stored data. The proposed approach can widely integrate with existing memory-based continual learning as well as adversarial training algorithms in a plug-and-play way. Extensive experiments on Split-CIFAR10/100 and Split-Tiny-ImageNet demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, achieving up to 8.13% higher accuracy for adversarial data.