# Precise Extraction of Deep Learning Models via Side-Channel Attacks on Edge/Endpoint Devices

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.02870 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02870/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [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)
- [Wide Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.07146/) (2016)
- [Practical Black-Box Attacks against Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.02697/) (2016)
- [Stealing Machine Learning Models via Prediction APIs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02943/) (2016)
- [The Open Images Dataset V4: Unified image classification, object detection, and visual relationship detection at scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00982/) (2018)
- [Knockoff Nets: Stealing Functionality of Black-Box Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02766/) (2018)
- [Eigen-CAM: Class Activation Map using Principal Components](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.00299/) (2020)
- [Copycat CNN: Stealing Knowledge by Persuading Confession with Random Non-Labeled Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05476/) (2018)
- [Cache Telepathy: Leveraging Shared Resource Attacks to Learn DNN Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.04761/) (2018)
- [Black-Box Ripper: Copying black-box models using generative evolutionary algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11158/) (2020)
- [DeepRebirth: Accelerating Deep Neural Network Execution on Mobile Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.04728/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Robustness of deep learning classification to adversarial input on GPUs: asynchronous parallel accumulation is a source of vulnerability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17173/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With growing popularity, deep learning (DL) models are becoming larger-scale, and only the companies with vast training datasets and immense computing power can manage their business serving such large models. Most of those DL models are proprietary to the companies who thus strive to keep their private models safe from the model extraction attack (MEA), whose aim is to steal the model by training surrogate models. Nowadays, companies are inclined to offload the models from central servers to edge/endpoint devices. As revealed in the latest studies, adversaries exploit this opportunity as new attack vectors to launch side-channel attack (SCA) on the device running victim model and obtain various pieces of the model information, such as the model architecture (MA) and image dimension (ID). Our work provides a comprehensive understanding of such a relationship for the first time and would benefit future MEA studies in both offensive and defensive sides in that they may learn which pieces of information exposed by SCA are more important than the others. Our analysis additionally reveals that by grasping the victim model information from SCA, MEA can get highly effective and successful even without any prior knowledge of the model. Finally, to evince the practicality of our analysis results, we empirically apply SCA, and subsequently, carry out MEA under realistic threat assumptions. The results show up to 5.8 times better performance than when the adversary has no model information about the victim model.
