mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

A Modified Word Saliency-Based Adversarial Attack on Text Classification Models

arXiv 2403.11297 ↗First posted 17 Mar 2024cs.CL cs.CR cs.LGcited by 9

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Abstract (arXiv)

This paper introduces a novel adversarial attack method targeting text classification models, termed the Modified Word Saliency-based Adversarial At-tack (MWSAA). The technique builds upon the concept of word saliency to strategically perturb input texts, aiming to mislead classification models while preserving semantic coherence. By refining the traditional adversarial attack approach, MWSAA significantly enhances its efficacy in evading detection by classification systems. The methodology involves first identifying salient words in the input text through a saliency estimation process, which prioritizes words most influential to the model's decision-making process. Subsequently, these salient words are subjected to carefully crafted modifications, guided by semantic similarity metrics to ensure that the altered text remains coherent and retains its original meaning. Empirical evaluations conducted on diverse text classification datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in generating adversarial examples capable of successfully deceiving state-of-the-art classification models. Comparative analyses with existing adversarial attack techniques further indicate the superiority of the proposed approach in terms of both attack success rate and preservation of text coherence.

Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 17 of its 20 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Mar 2024.

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17 of 20 references.

References · 17

  1. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,204
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  9. 2018Black-box Generation of Adversarial Text Sequences to Evade Deep Learning Classifierscited by 341
  10. 2019Adversarial Attacks and Defenses in Images, Graphs and Text: A Reviewcited by 234
  11. 2020Contextualized Perturbation for Textual Adversarial Attackcited by 136
  12. 2017Deep Text Classification Can be Fooledcited by 105
5 more
  1. 2021Bad Characters: Imperceptible NLP Attackscited by 69
  2. 2017Towards Crafting Text Adversarial Samplescited by 55
  3. 2019Learning to Discriminate Perturbations for Blocking Adversarial Attacks in Text Classificationcited by 55
  4. 2021Efficient Combinatorial Optimization for Word-level Adversarial Textual Attackcited by 17
  5. 2021The King is Naked: on the Notion of Robustness for Natural Language Processingcited by 16

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Citing papers per year: 2024: 3; 2025: 6.

9 papers.