# DarkFed: A Data-Free Backdoor Attack in Federated Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.03299 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.03299/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 6 May 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Data Free Backdoor Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06219/) (2024)
- [MARS: A Malignity-Aware Backdoor Defense in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.20383/) (2025)
- [Defending the Edge: Representative-Attention Defense against Backdoor Attacks in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10297/) (2025)
- [Beyond Denial-of-Service: The Puppeteer's Attack for Fine-Grained Control in Ranking-Based Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14687/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated learning (FL) has been demonstrated to be susceptible to backdoor attacks. However, existing academic studies on FL backdoor attacks rely on a high proportion of real clients with main task-related data, which is impractical. In the context of real-world industrial scenarios, even the simplest defense suffices to defend against the state-of-the-art attack, 3DFed. A practical FL backdoor attack remains in a nascent stage of development. To bridge this gap, we present DarkFed. Initially, we emulate a series of fake clients, thereby achieving the attacker proportion typical of academic research scenarios. Given that these emulated fake clients lack genuine training data, we further propose a data-free approach to backdoor FL. Specifically, we delve into the feasibility of injecting a backdoor using a shadow dataset. Our exploration reveals that impressive attack performance can be achieved, even when there is a substantial gap between the shadow dataset and the main task dataset. This holds true even when employing synthetic data devoid of any semantic information as the shadow dataset. Subsequently, we strategically construct a series of covert backdoor updates in an optimized manner, mimicking the properties of benign updates, to evade detection by defenses. A substantial body of empirical evidence validates the tangible effectiveness of DarkFed.