Exploiting Vulnerabilities in Speech Translation Systems through Targeted Adversarial Attacks

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Liu, Chang, Wu, Haolin, Yang, Xi, Zhang, Kui, Wu, Cong, Zhang, Weiming, Yu, Nenghai, Zhang, Tianwei, Guo, Qing, Zhang, Jie
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Liu, Chang
Wu, Haolin
Yang, Xi
Zhang, Kui
Wu, Cong
Zhang, Weiming
Yu, Nenghai
Zhang, Tianwei
Guo, Qing
Zhang, Jie
author_facet Liu, Chang
Wu, Haolin
Yang, Xi
Zhang, Kui
Wu, Cong
Zhang, Weiming
Yu, Nenghai
Zhang, Tianwei
Guo, Qing
Zhang, Jie
contents As speech translation (ST) systems become increasingly prevalent, understanding their vulnerabilities is crucial for ensuring robust and reliable communication. However, limited work has explored this issue in depth. This paper explores methods of compromising these systems through imperceptible audio manipulations. Specifically, we present two innovative approaches: (1) the injection of perturbation into source audio, and (2) the generation of adversarial music designed to guide targeted translation, while also conducting more practical over-the-air attacks in the physical world. Our experiments reveal that carefully crafted audio perturbations can mislead translation models to produce targeted, harmful outputs, while adversarial music achieve this goal more covertly, exploiting the natural imperceptibility of music. These attacks prove effective across multiple languages and translation models, highlighting a systemic vulnerability in current ST architectures. The implications of this research extend beyond immediate security concerns, shedding light on the interpretability and robustness of neural speech processing systems. Our findings underscore the need for advanced defense mechanisms and more resilient architectures in the realm of audio systems. More details and samples can be found at https://adv-st.github.io.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_00957
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exploiting Vulnerabilities in Speech Translation Systems through Targeted Adversarial Attacks
Liu, Chang
Wu, Haolin
Yang, Xi
Zhang, Kui
Wu, Cong
Zhang, Weiming
Yu, Nenghai
Zhang, Tianwei
Guo, Qing
Zhang, Jie
Sound
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Audio and Speech Processing
As speech translation (ST) systems become increasingly prevalent, understanding their vulnerabilities is crucial for ensuring robust and reliable communication. However, limited work has explored this issue in depth. This paper explores methods of compromising these systems through imperceptible audio manipulations. Specifically, we present two innovative approaches: (1) the injection of perturbation into source audio, and (2) the generation of adversarial music designed to guide targeted translation, while also conducting more practical over-the-air attacks in the physical world. Our experiments reveal that carefully crafted audio perturbations can mislead translation models to produce targeted, harmful outputs, while adversarial music achieve this goal more covertly, exploiting the natural imperceptibility of music. These attacks prove effective across multiple languages and translation models, highlighting a systemic vulnerability in current ST architectures. The implications of this research extend beyond immediate security concerns, shedding light on the interpretability and robustness of neural speech processing systems. Our findings underscore the need for advanced defense mechanisms and more resilient architectures in the realm of audio systems. More details and samples can be found at https://adv-st.github.io.
title Exploiting Vulnerabilities in Speech Translation Systems through Targeted Adversarial Attacks
topic Sound
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Audio and Speech Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00957