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Classification under strategic adversary manipulation using pessimistic bilevel optimisation

Classification under strategic adversary manipulation using pessimistic bilevel optimisation
Classification under strategic adversary manipulation using pessimistic bilevel optimisation
Adversarial machine learning concerns situations in which learners face attacks from active adversaries. Such scenarios arise in applications such as spam email filtering, malware detection and fake-image generation, where security methods must be actively updated to keep up with the ever improving generation of malicious data.We model these interactions between the learner and the adversary as a game and formulate the problem as a pessimistic bilevel optimisation problem with the learner taking the role of the leader. The adversary, modelled as a stochastic data generator, takes the role of the follower, generating data in response to the classifier. While existing models rely on the assumption that the adversary will choose the least costly solution leading to a convex lower-level problem with a unique solution, we present a novel model and solution method which do not make such assumptions. We compare these to the existing approach and see significant improvements in performance suggesting that relaxing these assumptions leads to a more realistic model.
cs.LG, math.OC
arXiv
Benfield, David
dfd71ebe-c3ec-4130-96f2-6cc80178c3c5
Coniglio, Stefano
03838248-2ce4-4dbc-a6f4-e010d6fdac67
Kunc, Martin
0b254052-f9f5-49f9-ac0b-148c257ba412
Vuong, Phan Tu
52577e5d-ebe9-4a43-b5e7-68aa06cfdcaf
Zemkoho, Alain
30c79e30-9879-48bd-8d0b-e2fbbc01269e
Benfield, David
dfd71ebe-c3ec-4130-96f2-6cc80178c3c5
Coniglio, Stefano
03838248-2ce4-4dbc-a6f4-e010d6fdac67
Kunc, Martin
0b254052-f9f5-49f9-ac0b-148c257ba412
Vuong, Phan Tu
52577e5d-ebe9-4a43-b5e7-68aa06cfdcaf
Zemkoho, Alain
30c79e30-9879-48bd-8d0b-e2fbbc01269e

[Unknown type: UNSPECIFIED]

Record type: UNSPECIFIED

Abstract

Adversarial machine learning concerns situations in which learners face attacks from active adversaries. Such scenarios arise in applications such as spam email filtering, malware detection and fake-image generation, where security methods must be actively updated to keep up with the ever improving generation of malicious data.We model these interactions between the learner and the adversary as a game and formulate the problem as a pessimistic bilevel optimisation problem with the learner taking the role of the leader. The adversary, modelled as a stochastic data generator, takes the role of the follower, generating data in response to the classifier. While existing models rely on the assumption that the adversary will choose the least costly solution leading to a convex lower-level problem with a unique solution, we present a novel model and solution method which do not make such assumptions. We compare these to the existing approach and see significant improvements in performance suggesting that relaxing these assumptions leads to a more realistic model.

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2410.20284v1 - Author's Original
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 26 October 2024
Additional Information: 27 pages, 5 figures, under review
Keywords: cs.LG, math.OC

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 508587
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/508587
PURE UUID: 937bb8bc-18bc-4aeb-9458-1cfee93e59b7
ORCID for Stefano Coniglio: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9568-4385
ORCID for Martin Kunc: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-3411-4052
ORCID for Phan Tu Vuong: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1474-994X
ORCID for Alain Zemkoho: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-1265-4178

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 27 Jan 2026 18:04
Last modified: 28 Jan 2026 04:00

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Contributors

Author: David Benfield
Author: Martin Kunc ORCID iD
Author: Phan Tu Vuong ORCID iD
Author: Alain Zemkoho ORCID iD

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