ACE: A Model Poisoning Attack on Contribution Evaluation Methods in Federated Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Xu, Zhangchen, Jiang, Fengqing, Niu, Luyao, Jia, Jinyuan, Li, Bo, Poovendran, Radha
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Xu, Zhangchen
Jiang, Fengqing
Niu, Luyao
Jia, Jinyuan
Li, Bo
Poovendran, Radha
author_facet Xu, Zhangchen
Jiang, Fengqing
Niu, Luyao
Jia, Jinyuan
Li, Bo
Poovendran, Radha
contents In Federated Learning (FL), a set of clients collaboratively train a machine learning model (called global model) without sharing their local training data. The local training data of clients is typically non-i.i.d. and heterogeneous, resulting in varying contributions from individual clients to the final performance of the global model. In response, many contribution evaluation methods were proposed, where the server could evaluate the contribution made by each client and incentivize the high-contributing clients to sustain their long-term participation in FL. Existing studies mainly focus on developing new metrics or algorithms to better measure the contribution of each client. However, the security of contribution evaluation methods of FL operating in adversarial environments is largely unexplored. In this paper, we propose the first model poisoning attack on contribution evaluation methods in FL, termed ACE. Specifically, we show that any malicious client utilizing ACE could manipulate the parameters of its local model such that it is evaluated to have a high contribution by the server, even when its local training data is indeed of low quality. We perform both theoretical analysis and empirical evaluations of ACE. Theoretically, we show our design of ACE can effectively boost the malicious client's perceived contribution when the server employs the widely-used cosine distance metric to measure contribution. Empirically, our results show ACE effectively and efficiently deceive five state-of-the-art contribution evaluation methods. In addition, ACE preserves the accuracy of the final global models on testing inputs. We also explore six countermeasures to defend ACE. Our results show they are inadequate to thwart ACE, highlighting the urgent need for new defenses to safeguard the contribution evaluation methods in FL.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_20975
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ACE: A Model Poisoning Attack on Contribution Evaluation Methods in Federated Learning
Xu, Zhangchen
Jiang, Fengqing
Niu, Luyao
Jia, Jinyuan
Li, Bo
Poovendran, Radha
Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
In Federated Learning (FL), a set of clients collaboratively train a machine learning model (called global model) without sharing their local training data. The local training data of clients is typically non-i.i.d. and heterogeneous, resulting in varying contributions from individual clients to the final performance of the global model. In response, many contribution evaluation methods were proposed, where the server could evaluate the contribution made by each client and incentivize the high-contributing clients to sustain their long-term participation in FL. Existing studies mainly focus on developing new metrics or algorithms to better measure the contribution of each client. However, the security of contribution evaluation methods of FL operating in adversarial environments is largely unexplored. In this paper, we propose the first model poisoning attack on contribution evaluation methods in FL, termed ACE. Specifically, we show that any malicious client utilizing ACE could manipulate the parameters of its local model such that it is evaluated to have a high contribution by the server, even when its local training data is indeed of low quality. We perform both theoretical analysis and empirical evaluations of ACE. Theoretically, we show our design of ACE can effectively boost the malicious client's perceived contribution when the server employs the widely-used cosine distance metric to measure contribution. Empirically, our results show ACE effectively and efficiently deceive five state-of-the-art contribution evaluation methods. In addition, ACE preserves the accuracy of the final global models on testing inputs. We also explore six countermeasures to defend ACE. Our results show they are inadequate to thwart ACE, highlighting the urgent need for new defenses to safeguard the contribution evaluation methods in FL.
title ACE: A Model Poisoning Attack on Contribution Evaluation Methods in Federated Learning
topic Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.20975