# Beyond Vulnerabilities: A Survey of Adversarial Attacks as Both Threats and Defenses in Computer Vision Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01845 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01845/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 106 of its 162 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 106)

- [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)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [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)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [Adversarial examples in the physical world](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.02533/) (2016)
- [Practical Black-Box Attacks against Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.02697/) (2016)
- [Ensemble Adversarial Training: Attacks and Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07204/) (2017)
- [Square Attack: a query-efficient black-box adversarial attack via random search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00049/) (2019)
- [Turning Your Weakness Into a Strength: Watermarking Deep Neural Networks by Backdooring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.04633/) (2018)
- [Nesterov Accelerated Gradient and Scale Invariance for Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06281/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Examples: Attacks and Defenses for Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07107/) (2017)
- [Adversarial Attacks and Defenses in Images, Graphs and Text: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08072/) (2019)
- [Sequential Modeling Enables Scalable Learning for Large Vision Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00785/) (2023)
- [Media Forensics and DeepFakes: an overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06564/) (2020)
- [Adversarial Example Does Good: Preventing Painting Imitation from Diffusion Models via Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04578/) (2023)
- [Dual Attention Suppression Attack: Generate Adversarial Camouflage in Physical World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01050/) (2021)
- [Anti-DreamBooth: Protecting users from personalized text-to-image synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15433/) (2023)
- [Mist: Towards Improved Adversarial Examples for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12683/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Sticker: A Stealthy Attack Method in the Physical World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06728/) (2021)
- [Universal Physical Camouflage Attacks on Object Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.04326/) (2019)
- [Physical Adversarial Attack meets Computer Vision: A Decade Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15179/) (2022)
- [Fast Feature Fool: A data independent approach to universal adversarial perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.05572/) (2017)
- [Toward effective protection against diffusion based mimicry through score distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12832/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Examples: Opportunities and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.04790/) (2018)
- [Adversarial Attacks Against Medical Deep Learning Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.05296/) (2018)

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

- [Explainable but Vulnerable: Adversarial Attacks on XAI Explanation in Cybersecurity Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03623/) (2025)
- [On the Adversarial Robustness of Learning-based Conformal Novelty Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.00463/) (2025)
- [SRAW-Attack: Space-Reweighted Adversarial Warping Attack for SAR Target Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10324/) (2026)
- [Towards Universal Physical Adversarial Attacks via a Joint Multi-Objective and Multi-Model Optimization Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17772/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Adversarial attacks against computer vision systems have emerged as a critical research area that challenges the fundamental assumptions about neural network robustness and security. This comprehensive survey examines the evolving landscape of adversarial techniques, revealing their dual nature as both sophisticated security threats and valuable defensive tools. We provide a systematic analysis of adversarial attack methodologies across three primary domains: pixel-space attacks, physically realizable attacks, and latent-space attacks. Our investigation traces the technical evolution from early gradient-based methods such as FGSM and PGD to sophisticated optimization techniques incorporating momentum, adaptive step sizes, and advanced transferability mechanisms. We examine how physically realizable attacks have successfully bridged the gap between digital vulnerabilities and real-world threats through adversarial patches, 3D textures, and dynamic optical perturbations. Additionally, we explore the emergence of latent-space attacks that leverage semantic structure in internal representations to create more transferable and meaningful adversarial examples. Beyond traditional offensive applications, we investigate the constructive use of adversarial techniques for vulnerability assessment in biometric authentication systems and protection against malicious generative models. Our analysis reveals critical research gaps, particularly in neural style transfer protection and computational efficiency requirements. This survey contributes a comprehensive taxonomy, evolution analysis, and identification of future research directions, aiming to advance understanding of adversarial vulnerabilities and inform the development of more robust and trustworthy computer vision systems.