# TabAttackBench: A Benchmark for Adversarial Attacks on Tabular Data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21027 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21027/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 37 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 May 2025.

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

- [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)
- [Intriguing properties of neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6199/) (2013)
- [Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.04644/) (2016)
- [Membership Inference Attacks against Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05820/) (2016)
- [Adversarial examples in the physical world](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.02533/) (2016)
- [ImageNet-trained CNNs are biased towards texture; increasing shape bias improves accuracy and robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12231/) (2018)
- [DeepFool: a simple and accurate method to fool deep neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.04599/) (2015)
- [The Limitations of Deep Learning in Adversarial Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07528/) (2015)
- [Revisiting Deep Learning Models for Tabular Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11959/) (2021)
- [Evasion Attacks against Machine Learning at Test Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06131/) (2017)
- [ZOO: Zeroth Order Optimization based Black-box Attacks to Deep Neural Networks without Training Substitute Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.03999/) (2017)
- [RobustBench: a standardized adversarial robustness benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.09670/) (2020)
- [Deep Neural Networks and Tabular Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.01889/) (2021)
- [Wild Patterns: Ten Years After the Rise of Adversarial Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.03141/) (2017)
- [Imperceptible, Robust, and Targeted Adversarial Examples for Automatic Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.10346/) (2019)
- [Adversarial VQA: A New Benchmark for Evaluating the Robustness of VQA Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.00245/) (2021)
- [Scientific Machine Learning Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.12773/) (2021)
- [Adversarial Attacks for Tabular Data: Application to Fraud Detection and Imbalanced Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08030/) (2021)
- [Graph Robustness Benchmark: Benchmarking the Adversarial Robustness of Graph Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.04314/) (2021)
- [Practical Hidden Voice Attacks against Speech and Speaker Recognition Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05734/) (2019)
- [FENCE: Feasible Evasion Attacks on Neural Networks in Constrained Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.10480/) (2019)
- [A Unified Framework for Adversarial Attack and Defense in Constrained Feature Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01156/) (2021)
- [REAP: A Large-Scale Realistic Adversarial Patch Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05680/) (2022)
- [Adversarial Robustness with Non-uniform Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12002/) (2021)
- [Adversarial Robustness for Tabular Data through Cost and Utility Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.13058/) (2022)
- [AttackBench: Evaluating Gradient-based Attacks for Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19460/) (2024)
- [Constrained Adaptive Attack: Effective Adversarial Attack Against Deep Neural Networks for Tabular Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00775/) (2024)
- [TabularBench: Benchmarking Adversarial Robustness for Tabular Deep Learning in Real-world Use-cases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07579/) (2024)
- [Benchmarking adversarial attacks and defenses for time-series data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.13261/) (2020)

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

- [Crafting Imperceptible On-Manifold Adversarial Attacks for Tabular Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10998/) (2025)
- [Boundary on the Table: Efficient Black-Box Decision-Based Attacks for Structured Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22850/) (2025)
- [Boundary-Seeking GAN-Augmented TabTransformer for Adversarially Robust Intrusion Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.16348/) (2026)
- [Adversarial Training for Tabular Credit Scoring: A Multi-Attack Robustness Evaluation in P2P Lending](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.09945/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Adversarial attacks pose a significant threat to machine learning models by inducing incorrect predictions through imperceptible perturbations to input data. While these attacks are well studied in unstructured domains such as images, their behaviour on tabular data remains underexplored due to mixed feature types and complex inter-feature dependencies. This study introduces a comprehensive benchmark that evaluates adversarial attacks on tabular datasets with respect to both effectiveness and imperceptibility. We assess five white-box attack algorithms (FGSM, BIM, PGD, DeepFool, and C&W) across four representative models (LR, MLP, TabTransformer and FT-Transformer) using eleven datasets spanning finance, energy, and healthcare domains. The benchmark employs four quantitative imperceptibility metrics (proximity, sparsity, deviation, and sensitivity) to characterise perturbation realism. The analysis quantifies the trade-off between these two aspects and reveals consistent differences between attack types, with ℓ_∞-based attacks achieving higher success but lower subtlety, and ℓ2-based attacks offering more realistic perturbations. The benchmark findings offer actionable insights for designing more imperceptible adversarial attacks, advancing the understanding of adversarial vulnerability in tabular machine learning.