Don't FREAK Out: A Frequency-Inspired Approach to Detecting Backdoor Poisoned Samples in DNNs

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the frequency sensitivity of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) when presented with clean samples versus poisoned samples. Our analysis shows significant disparities in frequency sensitivity between these two types of samples. Building on these findings, we propose FREAK, a frequency-based poisoned sample detection algorithm that is simple yet effective. Our experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of FREAK not only against frequency backdoor attacks but also against some spatial attacks. Our work is just the first step in leveraging these insights. We believe that our analysis and proposed defense mechanism will provide a foundation for future research and development of backdoor defenses.

Hasan Abed Al Kader Hammoud

PhD Student

Hasan is an Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. student in Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) Group in the Artificial Intelligence Initiative (AII) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem.