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Adversarial training with restricted data manipulation

Adversarial training with restricted data manipulation
Adversarial training with restricted data manipulation
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 everimproving generation of malicious data. Pessimistic Bilevel optimisation has been shown to be an effective method of training resilient classifiers against such adversaries. By modelling these scenarios as a game between the learner and the adversary, we anticipate how the adversary will modify their data and then train a resilient classifier accordingly. However, since existing pessimistic bilevel approaches feature an unrestricted adversary, the model is vulnerable to becoming overly pessimistic and unrealistic. When finding the optimal solution that defeats the classifier, it is possible that the adversary's data becomes nonsensical and loses its intended nature. Such an adversary will not properly reflect reality, and consequently, will lead to poor classifier performance when implemented on real-world data. By constructing a constrained pessimistic bilevel optimisation model, we restrict the adversary's movements and identify a solution that better reflects reality. We demonstrate through experiments that this model performs, on average, better than the existing approach.
cs.LG, cs.CR
arXiv
Benfield, David
dfd71ebe-c3ec-4130-96f2-6cc80178c3c5
Coniglio, Stefano
03838248-2ce4-4dbc-a6f4-e010d6fdac67
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
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 everimproving generation of malicious data. Pessimistic Bilevel optimisation has been shown to be an effective method of training resilient classifiers against such adversaries. By modelling these scenarios as a game between the learner and the adversary, we anticipate how the adversary will modify their data and then train a resilient classifier accordingly. However, since existing pessimistic bilevel approaches feature an unrestricted adversary, the model is vulnerable to becoming overly pessimistic and unrealistic. When finding the optimal solution that defeats the classifier, it is possible that the adversary's data becomes nonsensical and loses its intended nature. Such an adversary will not properly reflect reality, and consequently, will lead to poor classifier performance when implemented on real-world data. By constructing a constrained pessimistic bilevel optimisation model, we restrict the adversary's movements and identify a solution that better reflects reality. We demonstrate through experiments that this model performs, on average, better than the existing approach.

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2510.03254v1 - Author's Original
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 26 September 2025
Additional Information: 21 page, 5 figures
Keywords: cs.LG, cs.CR

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 509714
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/509714
PURE UUID: c3bee039-0e55-4d8f-97ec-93f0aae21ccc
ORCID for Stefano Coniglio: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9568-4385
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: 03 Mar 2026 17:47
Last modified: 04 Mar 2026 02:58

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Contributors

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

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