# Decentralized Federated Learning: A Survey on Security and Privacy

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.17319 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17319/

## Key facts

- Cited by 25 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 77 of its 166 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Jan 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 77)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [Deep Learning with Differential Privacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00133/) (2016)
- [Membership Inference Attacks against Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05820/) (2016)
- [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)
- [Federated Optimization: Distributed Machine Learning for On-Device Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02527/) (2016)
- [Exploiting Unintended Feature Leakage in Collaborative Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04049/) (2018)
- [Can Decentralized Algorithms Outperform Centralized Algorithms? A Case Study for Decentralized Parallel Stochastic Gradient Descent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09056/) (2017)
- [ML-Leaks: Model and Data Independent Membership Inference Attacks and Defenses on Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.01246/) (2018)
- [Differentially Private Federated Learning: A Client Level Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07557/) (2017)
- [FedMD: Heterogenous Federated Learning via Model Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03581/) (2019)
- [Analyzing Federated Learning through an Adversarial Lens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12470/) (2018)
- [Semi-supervised Knowledge Transfer for Deep Learning from Private Training Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05755/) (2016)
- [Deep Models Under the GAN: Information Leakage from Collaborative Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.07464/) (2017)
- [Neural Attention Distillation: Erasing Backdoor Triggers from Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.05930/) (2021)
- [Robust Aggregation for Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13445/) (2019)
- [Attack of the Tails: Yes, You Really Can Backdoor Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05084/) (2020)
- [Certified Defenses against Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09344/) (2018)
- [Privacy Amplification by Subsampling: Tight Analyses via Couplings and Divergences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.01647/) (2018)
- [Manipulating Machine Learning: Poisoning Attacks and Countermeasures for Regression Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00308/) (2018)
- [Model Pruning Enables Efficient Federated Learning on Edge Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12326/) (2019)
- [A Hybrid Approach to Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03224/) (2018)
- [Threats to Federated Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.02133/) (2020)
- [Private federated learning on vertically partitioned data via entity resolution and additively homomorphic encryption](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10677/) (2017)
- [SecureBoost: A Lossless Federated Learning Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08755/) (2019)
- [Privacy and Robustness in Federated Learning: Attacks and Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.06337/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Threats and Defenses in Federated Learning Life Cycle: A Comprehensive Survey and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06754/) (2024)
- [Federated Continual Learning: Concepts, Challenges, and Solutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07059/) (2025)
- [Sporadic Federated Learning Approach in Quantum Environment to Tackle Quantum Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12492/) (2025)
- [Memory Backdoor Attacks on Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14516/) (2024)
- [Swarm Learning: A Survey of Concepts, Applications, and Trends](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00556/) (2024)
- [Privacy Preserved Blood Glucose Level Cross-Prediction: An Asynchronous Decentralized Federated Learning Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15346/) (2024)
- [DeCAF: Decentralized Consensus-And-Factorization for Low-Rank Adaptation of Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21382/) (2025)
- [On the Security and Privacy of Federated Learning: A Survey with Attacks, Defenses, Frameworks, Applications, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13730/) (2025)
- [Noise-Robust and Resource-Efficient ADMM-based Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13451/) (2024)
- [Defending Against Diverse Attacks in Federated Learning Through Consensus-Based Bi-Level Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02535/) (2024)
- [DBA-DFL: Towards Distributed Backdoor Attacks with Network Detection in Decentralized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15005/) (2025)
- [TrustChain: A Blockchain Framework for Auditing and Verifying Aggregators in Decentralized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16406/) (2025)
- [Fedivertex: a Graph Dataset based on Decentralized Social Networks for Trustworthy Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20882/) (2025)
- [RepuNet: A Reputation System for Mitigating Malicious Clients in DFL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19892/) (2025)
- [Decentralized Federated Learning by Partial Message Exchange](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01730/) (2026)
- [Auditable Homomorphic-based Decentralized Collaborative AI with Attribute-based Differential Privacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00023/) (2024)
- [De-DSI: Decentralised Differentiable Search Index](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12237/) (2024)
- [FedNIA: Noise-Induced Activation Analysis for Mitigating Data Poisoning in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16396/) (2025)
- [Sky of Unlearning (SoUL): Rewiring Federated Machine Unlearning via Selective Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01705/) (2025)
- [CO-DEFEND: Continuous Decentralized Federated Learning for Secure DoH-Based Threat Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01882/) (2025)
- [Client Clustering Meets Knowledge Sharing: Enhancing Privacy and Robustness in Personalized Peer-to-Peer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20413/) (2025)
- [Closer to Reality: Practical Semi-Supervised Federated Learning for Foundation Model Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.16568/) (2025)
- [Resilient Federated Chain: Transforming Blockchain Consensus into an Active Defense Layer for Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.21841/) (2026)
- [Towards Serverless Semi-Decentralized Federated Learning with Heterogeneous Optimizers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06687/) (2026)
- [Reputation-driven Cooperation in Lattice-based Decentralized Federated Learning through Evolutionary Game Theory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.01197/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated learning has been rapidly evolving and gaining popularity in recent years due to its privacy-preserving features, among other advantages. Nevertheless, the exchange of model updates and gradients in this architecture provides new attack surfaces for malicious users of the network which may jeopardize the model performance and user and data privacy. For this reason, one of the main motivations for decentralized federated learning is to eliminate server-related threats by removing the server from the network and compensating for it through technologies such as blockchain. However, this advantage comes at the cost of challenging the system with new privacy threats. Thus, performing a thorough security analysis in this new paradigm is necessary. This survey studies possible variations of threats and adversaries in decentralized federated learning and overviews the potential defense mechanisms. Trustability and verifiability of decentralized federated learning are also considered in this study.