# Partner in Crime: Boosting Targeted Poisoning Attacks against Federated Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.09958 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09958/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [Fashion-MNIST: a Novel Image Dataset for Benchmarking Machine Learning Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.07747/) (2017)
- [Federated Learning: Strategies for Improving Communication Efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05492/) (2016)
- [Federated Learning with Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00582/) (2018)
- [Deep Leakage from Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08935/) (2019)
- [When Does Label Smoothing Help?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02629/) (2019)
- [Tackling the Objective Inconsistency Problem in Heterogeneous Federated Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07481/) (2020)
- [A Review of Uncertainty Quantification in Deep Learning: Techniques, Applications and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.06225/) (2020)
- [How To Backdoor Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.00459/) (2018)
- [Contrastive Representation Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10699/) (2019)
- [Byzantine-Robust Distributed Learning: Towards Optimal Statistical Rates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.01498/) (2018)
- [Federated Learning for Mobile Keyboard Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.03604/) (2018)
- [Federated Optimization: Distributed Machine Learning for On-Device Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02527/) (2016)
- [Exploiting Unintended Feature Leakage in Collaborative Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04049/) (2018)
- [Poison Frogs! Targeted Clean-Label Poisoning Attacks on Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00792/) (2018)
- [Local Model Poisoning Attacks to Byzantine-Robust Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11815/) (2019)
- [Transferability in Machine Learning: from Phenomena to Black-Box Attacks using Adversarial Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.07277/) (2016)
- [Analyzing Federated Learning through an Adversarial Lens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12470/) (2018)
- [FLTrust: Byzantine-robust Federated Learning via Trust Bootstrapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.13995/) (2020)
- [Deep Models Under the GAN: Information Leakage from Collaborative Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.07464/) (2017)
- [The Hidden Vulnerability of Distributed Learning in Byzantium](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07927/) (2018)
- [Attack of the Tails: Yes, You Really Can Backdoor Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05084/) (2020)
- [Certified Defenses for Data Poisoning Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03691/) (2017)
- [Data Poisoning Attacks Against Federated Learning Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08432/) (2020)
- [Can You Really Backdoor Federated Learning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07963/) (2019)
- [Towards Poisoning of Deep Learning Algorithms with Back-gradient Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.08689/) (2017)
- [FLDetector: Defending Federated Learning Against Model Poisoning Attacks via Detecting Malicious Clients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09209/) (2022)
- [Rethinking Soft Labels for Knowledge Distillation: A Bias-Variance Tradeoff Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.00650/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Adaptive and Robust Data Poisoning Detection and Sanitization in Wearable IoT Systems using Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02894/) (2025)
- [STAR-FL: Secure Federated Learning with Spatial-Temporal Analysis and Robust Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.14861/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated Learning (FL) exposes vulnerabilities to targeted poisoning attacks that aim to cause misclassification specifically from the source class to the target class. However, using well-established defense frameworks, the poisoning impact of these attacks can be greatly mitigated. We introduce a generalized pre-training stage approach to Boost Targeted Poisoning Attacks against FL, called BoTPA. Its design rationale is to leverage the model update contributions of all data points, including ones outside of the source and target classes, to construct an Amplifier set, in which we falsify the data labels before the FL training process, as a means to boost attacks. We comprehensively evaluate the effectiveness and compatibility of BoTPA on various targeted poisoning attacks. Under data poisoning attacks, our evaluations reveal that BoTPA can achieve a median Relative Increase in Attack Success Rate (RI-ASR) between 15.3% and 36.9% across all possible source-target class combinations, with varying percentages of malicious clients, compared to its baseline. In the context of model poisoning, BoTPA attains RI-ASRs ranging from 13.3% to 94.7% in the presence of the Krum and Multi-Krum defenses, from 2.6% to 49.2% under the Median defense, and from 2.9% to 63.5% under the Flame defense.