Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Liu, Xinlei, Hu, Tao, Yi, Peng, Han, Weitao, Xie, Jichao, Li, Baolin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.00826
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912562821464064
author Liu, Xinlei
Hu, Tao
Yi, Peng
Han, Weitao
Xie, Jichao
Li, Baolin
author_facet Liu, Xinlei
Hu, Tao
Yi, Peng
Han, Weitao
Xie, Jichao
Li, Baolin
contents Efficient adversarial attack methods are critical for assessing the robustness of computer vision models. In this paper, we reconstruct the optimization objective for generating adversarial examples as "maximizing the difference between the non-true labels' probability upper bound and the true label's probability," and propose a gradient-based attack method termed Sequential Difference Maximization (SDM). SDM establishes a three-layer optimization framework of "cycle-stage-step." The processes between cycles and between iterative steps are respectively identical, while optimization stages differ in terms of loss functions: in the initial stage, the negative probability of the true label is used as the loss function to compress the solution space; in subsequent stages, we introduce the Directional Probability Difference Ratio (DPDR) loss function to gradually increase the non-true labels' probability upper bound by compressing the irrelevant labels' probabilities. Experiments demonstrate that compared with previous SOTA methods, SDM not only exhibits stronger attack performance but also achieves higher attack cost-effectiveness. Additionally, SDM can be combined with adversarial training methods to enhance their defensive effects. The code is available at https://github.com/X-L-Liu/SDM.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_00826
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sequential Difference Maximization: Generating Adversarial Examples via Multi-Stage Optimization
Liu, Xinlei
Hu, Tao
Yi, Peng
Han, Weitao
Xie, Jichao
Li, Baolin
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Doctor of Engineering
Efficient adversarial attack methods are critical for assessing the robustness of computer vision models. In this paper, we reconstruct the optimization objective for generating adversarial examples as "maximizing the difference between the non-true labels' probability upper bound and the true label's probability," and propose a gradient-based attack method termed Sequential Difference Maximization (SDM). SDM establishes a three-layer optimization framework of "cycle-stage-step." The processes between cycles and between iterative steps are respectively identical, while optimization stages differ in terms of loss functions: in the initial stage, the negative probability of the true label is used as the loss function to compress the solution space; in subsequent stages, we introduce the Directional Probability Difference Ratio (DPDR) loss function to gradually increase the non-true labels' probability upper bound by compressing the irrelevant labels' probabilities. Experiments demonstrate that compared with previous SOTA methods, SDM not only exhibits stronger attack performance but also achieves higher attack cost-effectiveness. Additionally, SDM can be combined with adversarial training methods to enhance their defensive effects. The code is available at https://github.com/X-L-Liu/SDM.
title Sequential Difference Maximization: Generating Adversarial Examples via Multi-Stage Optimization
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Doctor of Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.00826