# MS-GAGA: Metric-Selective Guided Adversarial Generation Attack

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12468 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12468/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [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)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6572/) (2014)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (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)
- [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)
- [Deep Inside Convolutional Networks: Visualising Image Classification Models and Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6034/) (2013)
- [Theoretically Principled Trade-off between Robustness and Accuracy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08573/) (2019)
- [FaceForensics++: Learning to Detect Manipulated Facial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08971/) (2019)
- [Square Attack: a query-efficient black-box adversarial attack via random search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00049/) (2019)
- [Improving Transferability of Adversarial Examples with Input Diversity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.06978/) (2018)
- [Thinking in Frequency: Face Forgery Detection by Mining Frequency-aware Clues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09355/) (2020)
- [Evading Defenses to Transferable Adversarial Examples by Translation-Invariant Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.02884/) (2019)
- [Nesterov Accelerated Gradient and Scale Invariance for Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06281/) (2019)
- [Lips Don't Lie: A Generalisable and Robust Approach to Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07657/) (2020)
- [Adversarial Robustness Toolbox v1.0.0](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.01069/) (2018)
- [A study of the effect of JPG compression on adversarial images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.00853/) (2016)
- [Fighting Fake News: Image Splice Detection via Learned Self-Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04096/) (2018)
- [Noiseprint: a CNN-based camera model fingerprint](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.08396/) (2018)
- [M2TR: Multi-modal Multi-scale Transformers for Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09770/) (2021)
- [Evading Deepfake-Image Detectors with White- and Black-Box Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00622/) (2020)
- [Adversarial Deepfakes: Evaluating Vulnerability of Deepfake Detectors to Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12749/) (2020)
- [DeepRhythm: Exposing DeepFakes with Attentional Visual Heartbeat Rhythms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07634/) (2020)
- [Adversarial Threats to DeepFake Detection: A Practical Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.09957/) (2020)
- [Exploring Frequency Adversarial Attacks for Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15674/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Universal Anti-forensics Attack against Image Forgery Detection via Multi-modal Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06530/) (2026)
- [ARMOR: Agentic Reasoning for Methods Orchestration and Reparameterization for Robust Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.18386/) (2026)
- [ARMOR++: Agentic Orchestration of a Multi-Domain Primitive Set for Transferable Attacks on Deepfake Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15246/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present MS-GAGA (Metric-Selective Guided Adversarial Generation Attack), a two-stage framework for crafting transferable and visually imperceptible adversarial examples against deepfake detectors in black-box settings. In Stage 1, a dual-stream attack module generates adversarial candidates: MNTD-PGD applies enhanced gradient calculations optimized for small perturbation budgets, while SG-PGD focuses perturbations on visually salient regions. This complementary design expands the adversarial search space and improves transferability across unseen models. In Stage 2, a metric-aware selection module evaluates candidates based on both their success against black-box models and their structural similarity (SSIM) to the original image. By jointly optimizing transferability and imperceptibility, MS-GAGA achieves up to 27% higher misclassification rates on unseen detectors compared to state-of-the-art attacks.
