AprilPyone MaungMaung

AprilPyone MaungMaung, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving image classification method that uses encrypted images and an isotropic network such as the vision transformer. The proposed method allows us not only to apply images without visual information to deep neural networks (DNNs) for both training and testing but also to maintain a high classification accuracy. In addition, compressible encrypted images, called encryption-then-compression (EtC) images, can be used for both training and testing without any adaptation network. Previously, to classify EtC images, an adaptation network was required before a classification network, so methods with an adaptation network have been only tested on small images. To the best of our knowledge, previous privacy-preserving image classification methods have never considered image compressibility and patch embedding-based isotropic networks. In an experiment, the proposed privacy-preserving image classification was demonstrated to outperform state-of-the-art methods even when EtC images were used in terms of classification accuracy and robustness against various attacks under the use of two isotropic networks: vision transformer and ConvMixer.

Hitoshi Kiya, Ryota Iijima, MaungMaung Aprilpyone et al.

In this paper, we propose a combined use of transformed images and vision transformer (ViT) models transformed with a secret key. We show for the first time that models trained with plain images can be directly transformed to models trained with encrypted images on the basis of the ViT architecture, and the performance of the transformed models is the same as models trained with plain images when using test images encrypted with the key. In addition, the proposed scheme does not require any specially prepared data for training models or network modification, so it also allows us to easily update the secret key. In an experiment, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of performance degradation and model protection performance in an image classification task on the CIFAR-10 dataset.

Zheng Qi, AprilPyone MaungMaung, Yuma Kinoshita et al.

In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving image classification method that is based on the combined use of encrypted images and the vision transformer (ViT). The proposed method allows us not only to apply images without visual information to ViT models for both training and testing but to also maintain a high classification accuracy. ViT utilizes patch embedding and position embedding for image patches, so this architecture is shown to reduce the influence of block-wise image transformation. In an experiment, the proposed method for privacy-preserving image classification is demonstrated to outperform state-of-the-art methods in terms of classification accuracy and robustness against various attacks.

AprilPyone MaungMaung, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose a novel generative model-based attack on learnable image encryption methods proposed for privacy-preserving deep learning. Various learnable encryption methods have been studied to protect the sensitive visual information of plain images, and some of them have been investigated to be robust enough against all existing attacks. However, previous attacks on image encryption focus only on traditional cryptanalytic attacks or reverse translation models, so these attacks cannot recover any visual information if a block-scrambling encryption step, which effectively destroys global information, is applied. Accordingly, in this paper, generative models are explored to evaluate whether such models can restore sensitive visual information from encrypted images for the first time. We first point out that encrypted images have some similarity with plain images in the embedding space. By taking advantage of leaked information from encrypted images, we propose a guided generative model as an attack on learnable image encryption to recover personally identifiable visual information. We implement the proposed attack in two ways by utilizing two state-of-the-art generative models: a StyleGAN-based model and latent diffusion-based one. Experiments were carried out on the CelebA-HQ and ImageNet datasets. Results show that images reconstructed by the proposed method have perceptual similarities to plain images.

Zheng Qi, AprilPyone MaungMaung, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving image classification method using encrypted images under the use of the ConvMixer structure. Block-wise scrambled images, which are robust enough against various attacks, have been used for privacy-preserving image classification tasks, but the combined use of a classification network and an adaptation network is needed to reduce the influence of image encryption. However, images with a large size cannot be applied to the conventional method with an adaptation network because the adaptation network has so many parameters. Accordingly, we propose a novel method, which allows us not only to apply block-wise scrambled images to ConvMixer for both training and testing without the adaptation network, but also to provide a higher classification accuracy than conventional methods.

Hiroki Ito, AprilPyone MaungMaung, Sayaka Shiota et al.

In this paper, we propose an access control method with a secret key for semantic segmentation models for the first time so that unauthorized users without a secret key cannot benefit from the performance of trained models. The method enables us not only to provide a high segmentation performance to authorized users but to also degrade the performance for unauthorized users. We first point out that, for the application of semantic segmentation, conventional access control methods which use encrypted images for classification tasks are not directly applicable due to performance degradation. Accordingly, in this paper, selected feature maps are encrypted with a secret key for training and testing models, instead of input images. In an experiment, the protected models allowed authorized users to obtain almost the same performance as that of non-protected models but also with robustness against unauthorized access without a key.

AprilPyone MaungMaung, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose an attack method to block scrambled face images, particularly Encryption-then-Compression (EtC) applied images by utilizing the existing powerful StyleGAN encoder and decoder for the first time. Instead of reconstructing identical images as plain ones from encrypted images, we focus on recovering styles that can reveal identifiable information from the encrypted images. The proposed method trains an encoder by using plain and encrypted image pairs with a particular training strategy. While state-of-the-art attack methods cannot recover any perceptual information from EtC images, the proposed method discloses personally identifiable information such as hair color, skin color, eyeglasses, gender, etc. Experiments were carried out on the CelebA dataset, and results show that reconstructed images have some perceptual similarities compared to plain images.

Zheng Qi, AprilPyone MaungMaung, Hitoshi Kiya

In recent years, with the development of cloud computing platforms, privacy-preserving methods for deep learning have become an urgent problem. NeuraCrypt is a private random neural network for privacy-preserving that allows data owners to encrypt the medical data before the data uploading, and data owners can train and then test their models in a cloud server with the encrypted data directly. However, we point out that the performance of NeuraCrypt is heavily degraded when using color images. In this paper, we propose a Color-NeuraCrypt to solve this problem. Experiment results show that our proposed Color-NeuraCrypt can achieve a better classification accuracy than the original one and other privacy-preserving methods.

Teru Nagamori, Hiroki Ito, AprilPyone MaungMaung et al.

In this paper, we propose an access control method with a secret key for object detection models for the first time so that unauthorized users without a secret key cannot benefit from the performance of trained models. The method enables us not only to provide a high detection performance to authorized users but to also degrade the performance for unauthorized users. The use of transformed images was proposed for the access control of image classification models, but these images cannot be used for object detection models due to performance degradation. Accordingly, in this paper, selected feature maps are encrypted with a secret key for training and testing models, instead of input images. In an experiment, the protected models allowed authorized users to obtain almost the same performance as that of non-protected models but also with robustness against unauthorized access without a key.

Jia Chengyu, AprilPyone MaungMaung, Huy H. Nguyen et al.

Recent advances in vision-language models (VLMs) trained on web-scale image-text pairs have enabled impressive zero-shot transfer across a diverse range of visual tasks. However, comprehensive and independent evaluation beyond standard benchmarks is essential to understand their robustness, limitations, and real-world applicability. This paper presents a systematic evaluation framework for VLMs under natural adversarial scenarios for diverse downstream tasks, which has been overlooked in previous evaluation works. We evaluate a wide range of VLMs (CLIP, robust CLIP, BLIP2, and SigLIP2) on curated adversarial datasets (typographic attacks, ImageNet-A, and natural language-induced adversarial examples). We measure the natural adversarial performance of selected VLMs for zero-shot image classification, semantic segmentation, and visual question answering. Our analysis reveals that robust CLIP models can amplify natural adversarial vulnerabilities, and CLIP models significantly reduce performance for natural language-induced adversarial examples. Additionally, we provide interpretable analyses to identify failure modes. We hope our findings inspire future research in robust and fair multimodal pattern recognition.

AprilPyone MaungMaung, Makoto Shing, Kentaro Mitsui et al.

We propose a method for scene-level sketch-to-photo synthesis with text guidance. Although object-level sketch-to-photo synthesis has been widely studied, whole-scene synthesis is still challenging without reference photos that adequately reflect the target style. To this end, we leverage knowledge from recent large-scale pre-trained generative models, resulting in text-guided sketch-to-photo synthesis without the need for reference images. To train our model, we use self-supervised learning from a set of photographs. Specifically, we use a pre-trained edge detector that maps both color and sketch images into a standardized edge domain, which reduces the gap between photograph-based edge images (during training) and hand-drawn sketch images (during inference). We implement our method by fine-tuning a latent diffusion model (i.e., Stable Diffusion) with sketch and text conditions. Experiments show that the proposed method translates original sketch images that are not extracted from color images into photos with compelling visual quality.

Felix Hsieh, Huy H. Nguyen, AprilPyone MaungMaung et al.

Backdoor attacks compromise the integrity and reliability of machine learning models by embedding a hidden trigger during the training process, which can later be activated to cause unintended misbehavior. We propose a novel backdoor mitigation approach via machine unlearning to counter such backdoor attacks. The proposed method utilizes model activation of domain-equivalent unseen data to guide the editing of the model's weights. Unlike the previous unlearning-based mitigation methods, ours is computationally inexpensive and achieves state-of-the-art performance while only requiring a handful of unseen samples for unlearning. In addition, we also point out that unlearning the backdoor may cause the whole targeted class to be unlearned, thus introducing an additional repair step to preserve the model's utility after editing the model. Experiment results show that the proposed method is effective in unlearning the backdoor on different datasets and trigger patterns.

AprilPyone MaungMaung, Isao Echizen, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose key-based defense model proliferation by leveraging pre-trained models and utilizing recent efficient fine-tuning techniques on ImageNet-1k classification. First, we stress that deploying key-based models on edge devices is feasible with the latest model deployment advancements, such as Apple CoreML, although the mainstream enterprise edge artificial intelligence (Edge AI) has been focused on the Cloud. Then, we point out that the previous key-based defense on on-device image classification is impractical for two reasons: (1) training many classifiers from scratch is not feasible, and (2) key-based defenses still need to be thoroughly tested on large datasets like ImageNet. To this end, we propose to leverage pre-trained models and utilize efficient fine-tuning techniques to proliferate key-based models even on limited computing resources. Experiments were carried out on the ImageNet-1k dataset using adaptive and non-adaptive attacks. The results show that our proposed fine-tuned key-based models achieve a superior classification accuracy (more than 10% increase) compared to the previous key-based models on classifying clean and adversarial examples.

Tinghui Ouyang, AprilPyone MaungMaung, Koichi Konishi et al.

In the era of large AI models, the complex architecture and vast parameters present substantial challenges for effective AI quality management (AIQM), e.g. large language model (LLM). This paper focuses on investigating the quality assurance of a specific LLM-based AI product--a ChatGPT-based sentiment analysis system. The study delves into stability issues related to both the operation and robustness of the expansive AI model on which ChatGPT is based. Experimental analysis is conducted using benchmark datasets for sentiment analysis. The results reveal that the constructed ChatGPT-based sentiment analysis system exhibits uncertainty, which is attributed to various operational factors. It demonstrated that the system also exhibits stability issues in handling conventional small text attacks involving robustness.

AprilPyone MaungMaung, Huy H. Nguyen, Hitoshi Kiya et al.

We propose a method for generating spurious features by leveraging large-scale text-to-image diffusion models. Although the previous work detects spurious features in a large-scale dataset like ImageNet and introduces Spurious ImageNet, we found that not all spurious images are spurious across different classifiers. Although spurious images help measure the reliance of a classifier, filtering many images from the Internet to find more spurious features is time-consuming. To this end, we utilize an existing approach of personalizing large-scale text-to-image diffusion models with available discovered spurious images and propose a new spurious feature similarity loss based on neural features of an adversarially robust model. Precisely, we fine-tune Stable Diffusion with several reference images from Spurious ImageNet with a modified objective incorporating the proposed spurious-feature similarity loss. Experiment results show that our method can generate spurious images that are consistently spurious across different classifiers. Moreover, the generated spurious images are visually similar to reference images from Spurious ImageNet.

AprilPyone MaungMaung, Isao Echizen, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose a new key-based defense focusing on both efficiency and robustness. Although the previous key-based defense seems effective in defending against adversarial examples, carefully designed adaptive attacks can bypass the previous defense, and it is difficult to train the previous defense on large datasets like ImageNet. We build upon the previous defense with two major improvements: (1) efficient training and (2) optional randomization. The proposed defense utilizes one or more secret patch embeddings and classifier heads with a pre-trained isotropic network. When more than one secret embeddings are used, the proposed defense enables randomization on inference. Experiments were carried out on the ImageNet dataset, and the proposed defense was evaluated against an arsenal of state-of-the-art attacks, including adaptive ones. The results show that the proposed defense achieves a high robust accuracy and a comparable clean accuracy compared to the previous key-based defense.

Takayuki Osakabe, Maungmaung Aprilpyone, Sayaka Shiota et al.

Deep neural network (DNN) models are wellknown to easily misclassify prediction results by using input images with small perturbations, called adversarial examples. In this paper, we propose a novel adversarial detector, which consists of a robust classifier and a plain one, to highly detect adversarial examples. The proposed adversarial detector is carried out in accordance with the logits of plain and robust classifiers. In an experiment, the proposed detector is demonstrated to outperform a state-of-the-art detector without any robust classifier.

Hitoshi Kiya, AprilPyone MaungMaung, Yuma Kinoshita et al.

This article presents an overview of image transformation with a secret key and its applications. Image transformation with a secret key enables us not only to protect visual information on plain images but also to embed unique features controlled with a key into images. In addition, numerous encryption methods can generate encrypted images that are compressible and learnable for machine learning. Various applications of such transformation have been developed by using these properties. In this paper, we focus on a class of image transformation referred to as learnable image encryption, which is applicable to privacy-preserving machine learning and adversarially robust defense. Detailed descriptions of both transformation algorithms and performances are provided. Moreover, we discuss robustness against various attacks.

Ryota Iijima, AprilPyone MaungMaung, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose a block-wise image transformation method with a secret key for support vector machine (SVM) models. Models trained by using transformed images offer a poor performance to unauthorized users without a key, while they can offer a high performance to authorized users with a key. The proposed method is demonstrated to be robust enough against unauthorized access even under the use of kernel functions in a facial recognition experiment.

Hiroki Ito, MaungMaung AprilPyone, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose an access control method that uses the spatially invariant permutation of feature maps with a secret key for protecting semantic segmentation models. Segmentation models are trained and tested by permuting selected feature maps with a secret key. The proposed method allows rightful users with the correct key not only to access a model to full capacity but also to degrade the performance for unauthorized users. Conventional access control methods have focused only on image classification tasks, and these methods have never been applied to semantic segmentation tasks. In an experiment, the protected models were demonstrated to allow rightful users to obtain almost the same performance as that of non-protected models but also to be robust against access by unauthorized users without a key. In addition, a conventional method with block-wise transformations was also verified to have degraded performance under semantic segmentation models.

MaungMaung AprilPyone, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose a model protection method for convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with a secret key so that authorized users get a high classification accuracy, and unauthorized users get a low classification accuracy. The proposed method applies a block-wise transformation with a secret key to feature maps in the network. Conventional key-based model protection methods cannot maintain a high accuracy when a large key space is selected. In contrast, the proposed method not only maintains almost the same accuracy as non-protected accuracy, but also has a larger key space. Experiments were carried out on the CIFAR-10 dataset, and results show that the proposed model protection method outperformed the previous key-based model protection methods in terms of classification accuracy, key space, and robustness against key estimation attacks and fine-tuning attacks.

Hiroki Ito, MaungMaung AprilPyone, Hitoshi Kiya

Since production-level trained deep neural networks (DNNs) are of a great business value, protecting such DNN models against copyright infringement and unauthorized access is in a rising demand. However, conventional model protection methods focused only the image classification task, and these protection methods were never applied to semantic segmentation although it has an increasing number of applications. In this paper, we propose to protect semantic segmentation models from unauthorized access by utilizing block-wise transformation with a secret key for the first time. Protected models are trained by using transformed images. Experiment results show that the proposed protection method allows rightful users with the correct key to access the model to full capacity and deteriorate the performance for unauthorized users. However, protected models slightly drop the segmentation performance compared to non-protected models.

AprilPyone MaungMaung, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose a novel method for protecting convolutional neural network (CNN) models with a secret key set so that unauthorized users without the correct key set cannot access trained models. The method enables us to protect not only from copyright infringement but also the functionality of a model from unauthorized access without any noticeable overhead. We introduce three block-wise transformations with a secret key set to generate learnable transformed images: pixel shuffling, negative/positive transformation, and FFX encryption. Protected models are trained by using transformed images. The results of experiments with the CIFAR and ImageNet datasets show that the performance of a protected model was close to that of non-protected models when the key set was correct, while the accuracy severely dropped when an incorrect key set was given. The protected model was also demonstrated to be robust against various attacks. Compared with the state-of-the-art model protection with passports, the proposed method does not have any additional layers in the network, and therefore, there is no overhead during training and inference processes.

MaungMaung AprilPyone, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose a novel DNN watermarking method that utilizes a learnable image transformation method with a secret key. The proposed method embeds a watermark pattern in a model by using learnable transformed images and allows us to remotely verify the ownership of the model. As a result, it is piracy-resistant, so the original watermark cannot be overwritten by a pirated watermark, and adding a new watermark decreases the model accuracy unlike most of the existing DNN watermarking methods. In addition, it does not require a special pre-defined training set or trigger set. We empirically evaluated the proposed method on the CIFAR-10 dataset. The results show that it was resilient against fine-tuning and pruning attacks while maintaining a high watermark-detection accuracy.

MaungMaung AprilPyone, Hitoshi Kiya

We propose a novel method for protecting trained models with a secret key so that unauthorized users without the correct key cannot get the correct inference. By taking advantage of transfer learning, the proposed method enables us to train a large protected model like a model trained with ImageNet by using a small subset of a training dataset. It utilizes a learnable encryption step with a secret key to generate learnable transformed images. Models with pre-trained weights are fine-tuned by using such transformed images. In experiments with the ImageNet dataset, it is shown that the performance of a protected model was close to that of a non-protected model when the correct key was given, while the accuracy tremendously dropped when an incorrect key was used. The protected model was also demonstrated to be robust against key estimation attacks.

MaungMaung AprilPyone, Hitoshi Kiya

We propose a voting ensemble of models trained by using block-wise transformed images with secret keys for an adversarially robust defense. Key-based adversarial defenses were demonstrated to outperform state-of-the-art defenses against gradient-based (white-box) attacks. However, the key-based defenses are not effective enough against gradient-free (black-box) attacks without requiring any secret keys. Accordingly, we aim to enhance robustness against black-box attacks by using a voting ensemble of models. In the proposed ensemble, a number of models are trained by using images transformed with different keys and block sizes, and then a voting ensemble is applied to the models. In image classification experiments, the proposed defense is demonstrated to defend state-of-the-art attacks. The proposed defense achieves a clean accuracy of 95.56 % and an attack success rate of less than 9 % under attacks with a noise distance of 8/255 on the CIFAR-10 dataset.

MaungMaung AprilPyone, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose a novel defensive transformation that enables us to maintain a high classification accuracy under the use of both clean images and adversarial examples for adversarially robust defense. The proposed transformation is a block-wise preprocessing technique with a secret key to input images. We developed three algorithms to realize the proposed transformation: Pixel Shuffling, Bit Flipping, and FFX Encryption. Experiments were carried out on the CIFAR-10 and ImageNet datasets by using both black-box and white-box attacks with various metrics including adaptive ones. The results show that the proposed defense achieves high accuracy close to that of using clean images even under adaptive attacks for the first time. In the best-case scenario, a model trained by using images transformed by FFX Encryption (block size of 4) yielded an accuracy of 92.30% on clean images and 91.48% under PGD attack with a noise distance of 8/255, which is close to the non-robust accuracy (95.45%) for the CIFAR-10 dataset, and it yielded an accuracy of 72.18% on clean images and 71.43% under the same attack, which is also close to the standard accuracy (73.70%) for the ImageNet dataset. Overall, all three proposed algorithms are demonstrated to outperform state-of-the-art defenses including adversarial training whether or not a model is under attack.

MaungMaung AprilPyone, Hitoshi Kiya

In this paper, we propose a model protection method by using block-wise pixel shuffling with a secret key as a preprocessing technique to input images for the first time. The protected model is built by training with such preprocessed images. Experiment results show that the performance of the protected model is close to that of non-protected models when the key is correct, while the accuracy is severely dropped when an incorrect key is given, and the proposed model protection is robust against not only brute-force attacks but also fine-tuning attacks, while maintaining almost the same performance accuracy as that of using a non-protected model.

MaungMaung AprilPyone, Hitoshi Kiya

Conventional adversarial defenses reduce classification accuracy whether or not a model is under attacks. Moreover, most of image processing based defenses are defeated due to the problem of obfuscated gradients. In this paper, we propose a new adversarial defense which is a defensive transform for both training and test images inspired by perceptual image encryption methods. The proposed method utilizes a block-wise pixel shuffling method with a secret key. The experiments are carried out on both adaptive and non-adaptive maximum-norm bounded white-box attacks while considering obfuscated gradients. The results show that the proposed defense achieves high accuracy (91.55 %) on clean images and (89.66 %) on adversarial examples with noise distance of 8/255 on CIFAR-10 dataset. Thus, the proposed defense outperforms state-of-the-art adversarial defenses including latent adversarial training, adversarial training and thermometer encoding.

MaungMaung AprilPyone, Warit Sirichotedumrong, Hitoshi Kiya

Data for deep learning should be protected for privacy preserving. Researchers have come up with the notion of learnable image encryption to satisfy the requirement. However, existing privacy preserving approaches have never considered the threat of adversarial attacks. In this paper, we ran an adversarial test on learnable image encryption in five different scenarios. The results show different behaviors of the network in the variable key scenarios and suggest learnable image encryption provides certain level of adversarial robustness.