Improving $(α, f)$-Byzantine Resilience in Federated Learning via layerwise aggregation and cosine distance

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: García-Márquez, Mario, Rodríguez-Barroso, Nuria, Luzón, M. Victoria, Herrera, Francisco
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author García-Márquez, Mario
Rodríguez-Barroso, Nuria
Luzón, M. Victoria
Herrera, Francisco
author_facet García-Márquez, Mario
Rodríguez-Barroso, Nuria
Luzón, M. Victoria
Herrera, Francisco
contents The rapid development of artificial intelligence systems has amplified societal concerns regarding their usage, necessitating regulatory frameworks that encompass data privacy. Federated Learning (FL) is posed as potential solution to data privacy challenges in distributed machine learning by enabling collaborative model training {without data sharing}. However, FL systems remain vulnerable to Byzantine attacks, where malicious nodes contribute corrupted model updates. While Byzantine Resilient operators have emerged as a widely adopted robust aggregation algorithm to mitigate these attacks, its efficacy diminishes significantly in high-dimensional parameter spaces, sometimes leading to poor performing models. This paper introduces Layerwise Cosine Aggregation, a novel aggregation scheme designed to enhance robustness of these rules in such high-dimensional settings while preserving computational efficiency. A theoretical analysis is presented, demonstrating the superior robustness of the proposed Layerwise Cosine Aggregation compared to original robust aggregation operators. Empirical evaluation across diverse image classification datasets, under varying data distributions and Byzantine attack scenarios, consistently demonstrates the improved performance of Layerwise Cosine Aggregation, achieving up to a 16% increase in model accuracy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_21244
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Improving $(α, f)$-Byzantine Resilience in Federated Learning via layerwise aggregation and cosine distance
García-Márquez, Mario
Rodríguez-Barroso, Nuria
Luzón, M. Victoria
Herrera, Francisco
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
The rapid development of artificial intelligence systems has amplified societal concerns regarding their usage, necessitating regulatory frameworks that encompass data privacy. Federated Learning (FL) is posed as potential solution to data privacy challenges in distributed machine learning by enabling collaborative model training {without data sharing}. However, FL systems remain vulnerable to Byzantine attacks, where malicious nodes contribute corrupted model updates. While Byzantine Resilient operators have emerged as a widely adopted robust aggregation algorithm to mitigate these attacks, its efficacy diminishes significantly in high-dimensional parameter spaces, sometimes leading to poor performing models. This paper introduces Layerwise Cosine Aggregation, a novel aggregation scheme designed to enhance robustness of these rules in such high-dimensional settings while preserving computational efficiency. A theoretical analysis is presented, demonstrating the superior robustness of the proposed Layerwise Cosine Aggregation compared to original robust aggregation operators. Empirical evaluation across diverse image classification datasets, under varying data distributions and Byzantine attack scenarios, consistently demonstrates the improved performance of Layerwise Cosine Aggregation, achieving up to a 16% increase in model accuracy.
title Improving $(α, f)$-Byzantine Resilience in Federated Learning via layerwise aggregation and cosine distance
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.21244