Thursday, April 3, 2025
HomeArtificial IntelligenceThe Defender vs. The Attacker Game

The Defender vs. The Attacker Game

Published on

SIEM as a Service

Follow Us on Google News

The researcher proposes a game-theoretic approach to analyze the interaction between the model defender and attacker in trigger-based black-box model watermarking. 

They design payoff functions for both players and determine the optimal strategies for each player, which provides a theoretical foundation for future research on black-box model watermarking.

A framework where a watermark is embedded in a model by training it on a dataset containing both normal images and a set of “trigger” samples ensures the watermarked model maintains performance on normal data while exhibiting specific behavior on the trigger set, enabling ownership verification. 

By leveraging game theory, they analyze the interaction between the watermark embedder and a potential attacker and focus on a partial cooperation game, acknowledging that both parties have an interest in maintaining the model’s overall performance while the embedder seeks to establish ownership. 

Investigate Real-World Malicious Links, Malware & Phishing Attacks With ANY.RUN – Try for Free

This novel approach extends existing game-theoretic analyses in adversarial machine learning by incorporating cooperative aspects, providing valuable insights for designing more secure and resilient watermarking strategies for deep neural networks.

The game analysis investigates the strategic interaction between a model defender and attacker, where the defender employs watermarking to protect models while the attacker aims to compromise them. 

By modeling this interaction as a game with payoffs for both players, it takes into consideration a variety of factors, including the accuracy of the model, the accuracy of the watermark detection, and the force of the attack. 

The key findings reveal that the defender’s optimal strategy depends on the difference in robustness between different watermarked models and the difference in strength between different attacks. 

Specifically, the analysis identifies conditions under which the defender’s optimal response involves a mixed strategy, where they probabilistically choose between different watermarking approaches based on the expected attack intensity and the robustness of their models to those attacks. 

Unlike existing studies that solely focus on cooperative or non-cooperative scenarios, the research acknowledges the presence of both cooperative and competitive interests for both the defender (model owner) and the attacker. 

The game model incorporates economic costs and benefits into the payoff function, considering the performance of the model on the original task while emphasizing competition in watermark detection. 

The study reveals that the defender’s optimal response is influenced by the robustness variation among watermarked models and the strength disparity between different attacks, which underscores the critical importance of enhancing the robustness of watermarked models against real-world attacks during system design. 

Future research directions include examining the impact of trigger set selection on DNN model performance in real-world applications, conducting practical implementations to validate and extend the proposed framework, and exploring watermarking games for generative models to further enrich the watermarking theory.

Find this News Interesting! Follow us on Google NewsLinkedIn, and X to Get Instant Updates!

Aman Mishra
Aman Mishra
Aman Mishra is a Security and privacy Reporter covering various data breach, cyber crime, malware, & vulnerability.

Latest articles

Cisco AnyConnect VPN Server Vulnerability Allows Attackers to Trigger DoS

Cisco has disclosed a significant vulnerability in its AnyConnect VPN Server for Meraki MX and Z...

New Trinda Malware Targets Android Devices by Replacing Phone Numbers During Calls

Kaspersky Lab has uncovered a new version of the Triada Trojan, a sophisticated malware...

DarkCloud Stealer Uses Weaponized .TAR Archives to Target Organizations and Steal Passwords

A recent cyberattack campaign leveraging the DarkCloud stealer has been identified, targeting Spanish companies...

SonicWall Firewall Vulnerability Enables Unauthorized Access

Researchers from Bishop Fox have successfully exploited CVE-2024-53704, an authentication bypass vulnerability that affects SonicWall...

Supply Chain Attack Prevention

Free Webinar - Supply Chain Attack Prevention

Recent attacks like Polyfill[.]io show how compromised third-party components become backdoors for hackers. PCI DSS 4.0’s Requirement 6.4.3 mandates stricter browser script controls, while Requirement 12.8 focuses on securing third-party providers.

Join Vivekanand Gopalan (VP of Products – Indusface) and Phani Deepak Akella (VP of Marketing – Indusface) as they break down these compliance requirements and share strategies to protect your applications from supply chain attacks.

Discussion points

Meeting PCI DSS 4.0 mandates.
Blocking malicious components and unauthorized JavaScript execution.
PIdentifying attack surfaces from third-party dependencies.
Preventing man-in-the-browser attacks with proactive monitoring.

More like this

Cisco AnyConnect VPN Server Vulnerability Allows Attackers to Trigger DoS

Cisco has disclosed a significant vulnerability in its AnyConnect VPN Server for Meraki MX and Z...

New Trinda Malware Targets Android Devices by Replacing Phone Numbers During Calls

Kaspersky Lab has uncovered a new version of the Triada Trojan, a sophisticated malware...

DarkCloud Stealer Uses Weaponized .TAR Archives to Target Organizations and Steal Passwords

A recent cyberattack campaign leveraging the DarkCloud stealer has been identified, targeting Spanish companies...