Researchers in the US have developed an adversarial attack against the ability of machine learning systems to correctly interpret what they see – in

Optical Adversarial Attack Can Change the Meaning of Road Signs

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2021-08-16 23:30:04

Researchers in the US have developed an adversarial attack against the ability of machine learning systems to correctly interpret what they see – including mission-critical items such as road signs – by shining patterned light onto real world objects. In one experiment, the approach succeeded in causing the meaning of a ‘STOP’ roadside sign to be transformed into a ’30mph’ speed limit sign.

Perturbations on a sign, created by shining crafted light on it, distorts how it is interpreted in a machine learning system. Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2108.06247.pdf

An OPtical ADversarial attack (OPAD), as proposed by the paper, uses structured illumination to alter the appearance of target objects, and requires only a commodity projector, a camera and a computer. The researchers were able to successfully undertake both white-box and black box attacks using this technique.

White box attacks are unlikely scenarios where an attacker may have direct access to a training model procedure or to the governance of the input data. Black box attacks, conversely, are typically formulated by inferring how a machine learning is composed, or at least how it behaves, crafting ‘shadow’ models, and developing adversarial attacks designed to work on the original model.