On the Weaknesses of Backdoor-based Model Watermarking: An Information-theoretic Perspective

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hu, Aoting, Chen, Yanzhi, Xie, Renjie, Weller, Adrian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Hu, Aoting
Chen, Yanzhi
Xie, Renjie
Weller, Adrian
author_facet Hu, Aoting
Chen, Yanzhi
Xie, Renjie
Weller, Adrian
contents Safeguarding the intellectual property of machine learning models has emerged as a pressing concern in AI security. Model watermarking is a powerful technique for protecting ownership of machine learning models, yet its reliability has been recently challenged by recent watermark removal attacks. In this work, we investigate why existing watermark embedding techniques particularly those based on backdooring are vulnerable. Through an information-theoretic analysis, we show that the resilience of watermarking against erasure attacks hinges on the choice of trigger-set samples, where current uses of out-distribution trigger-set are inherently vulnerable to white-box adversaries. Based on this discovery, we propose a novel model watermarking scheme, In-distribution Watermark Embedding (IWE), to overcome the limitations of existing method. To further minimise the gap to clean models, we analyze the role of logits as watermark information carriers and propose a new approach to better conceal watermark information within the logits. Experiments on real-world datasets including CIFAR-100 and Caltech-101 demonstrate that our method robustly defends against various adversaries with negligible accuracy loss (< 0.1%).
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_06130
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the Weaknesses of Backdoor-based Model Watermarking: An Information-theoretic Perspective
Hu, Aoting
Chen, Yanzhi
Xie, Renjie
Weller, Adrian
Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Safeguarding the intellectual property of machine learning models has emerged as a pressing concern in AI security. Model watermarking is a powerful technique for protecting ownership of machine learning models, yet its reliability has been recently challenged by recent watermark removal attacks. In this work, we investigate why existing watermark embedding techniques particularly those based on backdooring are vulnerable. Through an information-theoretic analysis, we show that the resilience of watermarking against erasure attacks hinges on the choice of trigger-set samples, where current uses of out-distribution trigger-set are inherently vulnerable to white-box adversaries. Based on this discovery, we propose a novel model watermarking scheme, In-distribution Watermark Embedding (IWE), to overcome the limitations of existing method. To further minimise the gap to clean models, we analyze the role of logits as watermark information carriers and propose a new approach to better conceal watermark information within the logits. Experiments on real-world datasets including CIFAR-100 and Caltech-101 demonstrate that our method robustly defends against various adversaries with negligible accuracy loss (< 0.1%).
title On the Weaknesses of Backdoor-based Model Watermarking: An Information-theoretic Perspective
topic Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.06130