# FaceCat: Enhancing Face Recognition Security with a Unified Diffusion Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.09193 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09193/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 37 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Apr 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/robustness-privacy-and-adversarial-aspects/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6572/) (2014)
- [Towards Deep Learning Models Resistant to Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.06083/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Visual Features by Contrasting Cluster Assignments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09882/) (2020)
- [Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07261/) (2016)
- [In Defense of the Triplet Loss for Person Re-Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.07737/) (2017)
- [DiffusionCLIP: Text-Guided Diffusion Models for Robust Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02711/) (2021)
- [Improving Transferability of Adversarial Examples with Input Diversity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.06978/) (2018)
- [Semi-Supervised Learning with Deep Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.5298/) (2014)
- [Adversarial Feature Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.09782/) (2016)
- [Large Scale Adversarial Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02544/) (2019)
- [A study of the effect of JPG compression on adversarial images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.00853/) (2016)
- [Efficient Decision-based Black-box Adversarial Attacks on Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.04433/) (2019)
- [Searching Central Difference Convolutional Networks for Face Anti-Spoofing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04092/) (2020)
- [Learning Deep Models for Face Anti-Spoofing: Binary or Auxiliary Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11097/) (2018)
- [AdvHat: Real-world adversarial attack on ArcFace Face ID system](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.08705/) (2019)
- [Biometric Face Presentation Attack Detection with Multi-Channel Convolutional Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08848/) (2019)
- [Deep Pixel-wise Binary Supervision for Face Presentation Attack Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04047/) (2019)
- [Deep Tree Learning for Zero-shot Face Anti-Spoofing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.02860/) (2019)
- [FLIP: Cross-domain Face Anti-spoofing with Language Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16649/) (2023)
- [LiBRe: A Practical Bayesian Approach to Adversarial Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14835/) (2021)
- [Towards Effective Adversarial Textured 3D Meshes on Physical Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15818/) (2023)
- [Unified Detection of Digital and Physical Face Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02156/) (2021)
- [Deep Models and Shortwave Infrared Information to Detect Face Presentation Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11469/) (2020)
- [Benchmarking Joint Face Spoofing and Forgery Detection with Visual and Physiological Cues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.05401/) (2022)
- [Flexible-Modal Face Anti-Spoofing: A Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08192/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Face anti-spoofing (FAS) and adversarial detection (FAD) have been regarded as critical technologies to ensure the safety of face recognition systems. However, due to limited practicality, complex deployment, and the additional computational overhead, it is necessary to implement both detection techniques within a unified framework. This paper aims to achieve this goal by breaking through two primary obstacles: 1) the suboptimal face feature representation and 2) the scarcity of training data. To address the limited performance caused by existing feature representations, motivated by the rich structural and detailed features of face diffusion models, we propose FaceCat, the first approach leveraging the diffusion model to simultaneously enhance the performance of FAS and FAD. Specifically, FaceCat elaborately designs a hierarchical fusion mechanism to capture rich face semantic features of the diffusion model. These features then serve as a robust foundation for a lightweight head, designed to execute FAS and FAD simultaneously. Due to the limitations in feature representation that arise from relying solely on single-modality image data, we further propose a novel text-guided multi-modal alignment strategy that utilizes text prompts to enrich feature representation, thereby enhancing performance. To combat data scarcity, we build a comprehensive dataset with a wide range of 28 attack types, offering greater potential for a unified framework in facial security. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of FaceCat generalizes significantly better and obtains excellent robustness against common input transformations.