Obfuscated Gradients Give a False Sense of Security: Circumventing Defenses to Adversarial Examples
Year: 2018
Type: preprint
Abstract: We identify obfuscated gradients, a kind of gradient masking, as a phenomenon that leads to a false sense of security in defenses against adversarial examples. While defenses that cause obfuscated gradients appear to defeat iterative optimization-based attacks, we find defenses relying on this effect can be circumvented. We describe characteristic behaviors of defenses exhibiting the effect, and for each of the three types of obfuscated gradients we discover, we develop attack techniques to overcome it. In a case study, examining non-certified white-box-secure defenses at ICLR 2018, we find obfuscated gradients are a common occurrence, with 7 of 9 defenses relying on obfuscated gradients. Our new attacks successfully circumvent 6 completely, and 1 partially, in the original threat model each paper considers.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2787708942