# Evolutionary Trigger Detection and Lightweight Model Repair Based Backdoor Defense

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.05396 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05396/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [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)
- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [Going Deeper with Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.4842/) (2014)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [How transferable are features in deep neural networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1792/) (2014)
- [BadNets: Identifying Vulnerabilities in the Machine Learning Model Supply Chain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06733/) (2017)
- [Targeted Backdoor Attacks on Deep Learning Systems Using Data Poisoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05526/) (2017)
- [Fine-Pruning: Defending Against Backdooring Attacks on Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.12185/) (2018)
- [Poison Frogs! Targeted Clean-Label Poisoning Attacks on Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00792/) (2018)
- [STRIP: A Defence Against Trojan Attacks on Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06531/) (2019)
- [Input-Aware Dynamic Backdoor Attack](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08138/) (2020)
- [A new Backdoor Attack in CNNs by training set corruption without label poisoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.11237/) (2019)
- [DeepDriving: Learning Affordance for Direct Perception in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.00256/) (2015)
- [Convolutional Neural Networks for Medical Image Analysis: Full Training or Fine Tuning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.00712/) (2017)
- [Backdoor Embedding in Convolutional Neural Network Models via Invisible Perturbation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.10307/) (2018)
- [Backdoor Attacks Against Deep Learning Systems in the Physical World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.14580/) (2020)
- [Smooth Grad-CAM++: An Enhanced Inference Level Visualization Technique for Deep Convolutional Neural Network Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.01224/) (2019)
- [Model Agnostic Defence against Backdoor Attacks in Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.02203/) (2019)
- [Few-shot Backdoor Defense Using Shapley Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.14889/) (2021)
- [Gotta Catch 'Em All: Using Honeypots to Catch Adversarial Attacks on Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08554/) (2019)
- [From Shortcuts to Triggers: Backdoor Defense with Denoised PoE](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14910/) (2023)
- [Backdoor Defense via Suppressing Model Shortcuts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05631/) (2022)

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

- [BadScan: An Architectural Backdoor Attack on Visual State Space Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17283/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have been widely used in many areas such as autonomous driving and face recognition. However, DNN model is fragile to backdoor attack. A backdoor in the DNN model can be activated by a poisoned input with trigger and leads to wrong prediction, which causes serious security issues in applications. It is challenging for current defenses to eliminate the backdoor effectively with limited computing resources, especially when the sizes and numbers of the triggers are variable as in the physical world. We propose an efficient backdoor defense based on evolutionary trigger detection and lightweight model repair. In the first phase of our method, CAM-focus Evolutionary Trigger Filter (CETF) is proposed for trigger detection. CETF is an effective sample-preprocessing based method with the evolutionary algorithm, and our experimental results show that CETF not only distinguishes the images with triggers accurately from the clean images, but also can be widely used in practice for its simplicity and stability in different backdoor attack situations. In the second phase of our method, we leverage several lightweight unlearning methods with the trigger detected by CETF for model repair, which also constructively demonstrate the underlying correlation of the backdoor with Batch Normalization layers. Source code will be published after accepted.