# C-LEAD: Contrastive Learning for Enhanced Adversarial Defense

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.27249 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.27249/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Representation Learning with Contrastive Predictive Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03748/) (2018)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [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)
- [Benchmarking Neural Network Robustness to Common Corruptions and Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.12261/) (2019)
- [FaceNet: A Unified Embedding for Face Recognition and Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03832/) (2015)
- [Adversarial examples in the physical world](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.02533/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning by Predicting Image Rotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07728/) (2018)
- [Theoretically Principled Trade-off between Robustness and Accuracy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08573/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Visual Representations by Solving Jigsaw Puzzles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09246/) (2016)
- [Contrastive Multiview Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05849/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Examples Are Not Bugs, They Are Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02175/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Machine Learning at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01236/) (2016)
- [Ensemble Adversarial Training: Attacks and Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07204/) (2017)
- [Self-Supervised Learning of Pretext-Invariant Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01991/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Training for Free!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12843/) (2019)
- [A Theoretical Analysis of Contrastive Unsupervised Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09229/) (2019)
- [Generalizing to Unseen Domains via Adversarial Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.12018/) (2018)
- [Unlabeled Data Improves Adversarial Robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13736/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Examples: Attacks and Defenses for Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07107/) (2017)
- [On Mutual Information Maximization for Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.13625/) (2019)
- [A Fourier Perspective on Model Robustness in Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08988/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Examples Improve Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09665/) (2019)
- [Sampling Matters in Deep Embedding Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.07567/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Feature Extraction by Time-Contrastive Learning and Nonlinear ICA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.06336/) (2016)
- [Adversarial Attacks and Defences: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00069/) (2018)
- [Attacks Which Do Not Kill Training Make Adversarial Learning Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.11242/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Embedding Learning via Invariant and Spreading Instance Feature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03436/) (2019)

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

- [A Generative Adversarial Approach to Adversarial Attacks Guided by Contrastive Language-Image Pre-trained Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01317/) (2025)
- [A Mechanistic Analysis of Adversarial Fine-tuning of Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07593/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have achieved remarkable success in computer vision tasks such as image classification, segmentation, and object detection. However, they are vulnerable to adversarial attacks, which can cause incorrect predictions with small perturbations in input images. Addressing this issue is crucial for deploying robust deep-learning systems. This paper presents a novel approach that utilizes contrastive learning for adversarial defense, a previously unexplored area. Our method leverages the contrastive loss function to enhance the robustness of classification models by training them with both clean and adversarially perturbed images. By optimizing the model's parameters alongside the perturbations, our approach enables the network to learn robust representations that are less susceptible to adversarial attacks. Experimental results show significant improvements in the model's robustness against various types of adversarial perturbations. This suggests that contrastive loss helps extract more informative and resilient features, contributing to the field of adversarial robustness in deep learning. The code is publicly made available on GitHub in the following link: https://github.com/suklav/C_Lead .