Cited by 212Privacy-Preserving Technologies in DataAdversarial Robustness in Machine LearningCryptography and Data Security

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 92 of the 92 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 62 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Poisoning Attacks in Federated Learning: A Survey

Open access

Abstract

Federated learning faces many security and privacy issues. Among them, poisoning attacks can significantly impact global models, and malicious attackers can prevent global models from converging or even manipulating the prediction results of global models. Defending against poisoning attacks is a very urgent and challenging task. However, the systematic reviews of poisoning attacks and their corresponding defense strategies from a privacy-preserving perspective still need more effort. This survey provides an in-depth and up-to-date overview of poisoning attacks and corresponding defense strategies in federated learning. We first classify the poisoning attacks according to their methods and targets. Next, we analyze the differences and connections between the various categories of poisoning attacks. In addition, we classify the defense strategies against poisoning attacks in federated learning into three categories and analyze their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, we discuss the privacy protection problem in poisoning attacks and their countermeasure and propose potential research directions from the perspective of attack and defense, respectively.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This survey reviews poisoning attacks in federated learning and classifies them by attack method and attacker intent, while also classifying defenses into model analysis, Byzantine robust aggregation, and verification-based approaches. It argues that privacy protection and secure aggregation are often overlooked in poisoning defense research and proposes future directions from both attack and defense perspectives.

Key findings

  • Poisoning attacks are classified by method into data poisoning attacks (clean-label and dirty-label) and model poisoning attacks, and by attacker intention into targeted, semi-targeted, and untargeted attacks.
  • Model poisoning attacks tend to work better in practice because they directly modify local model parameters; the survey cites Eugene et al.’s experimental result that controlling 1% of clients for model poisoning can achieve the same or better effect as controlling 20% of clients for data poisoning.
  • Defense strategies are grouped into three categories: model analysis, Byzantine robust aggregation (gradient clipping, removing extreme values, differential privacy), and verification-based methods; the survey evaluates their strengths, weaknesses, and support for secure aggregation.
  • Non-IID data makes defense harder because local models are inherently different, and many defenses that require server access to individual local models are incompatible with secure aggregation, though homomorphic encryption and differential privacy offer partial paths.

Methods

  • Design: a survey that reviews existing poisoning attack methods and defense strategies in federated learning, with a stated focus on privacy protection and secure aggregation.
  • Data/sample: published papers from recent years, including representative poisoning attack and defense works summarized in Tables 2 and 3; no primary dataset or experimental sample is collected.
  • Main analysis: qualitative taxonomy and comparative analysis of attack categories, defense categories, data distribution assumptions, stealthiness, persistence, and secure-aggregation support.

Limitations

  • Paper-stated: most existing defense strategies are static, targeted at specific known attacks, and assume limited adversary capabilities; defending against poisoning attacks while protecting privacy remains an open problem, and non-IID data makes server-side defense more difficult.
  • Paper-stated: many existing studies assume the server can access the client’s local model, which risks privacy leakage and prevents direct integration with secure aggregation.
  • Evident from the text: the survey does not report a systematic literature search protocol, quantitative meta-analysis, or primary experiments; its conclusions are based on selected representative works and qualitative synthesis.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1109/access.2023.3238823

Cites

92 of 92 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

0 of 62 cited sources checked · 0 supported · 0 flagged

Show all 43 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 43
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 39
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
71 of 71
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    In federated learning, it is impossible to guarantee that all clients are reliable.

    “Since many clients are involved in training in federation learning, it is impossible to guarantee that all clients are reliable.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Due to the catastrophic forgetting property of neural networks, an attacker's malicious updates may be forgotten during subsequent training.

    “Due to the catastrophic forgetting property of neural networks, an attacker's malicious updates may be forgotten during subsequent training.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    There are significant differences between poisoned and benign models, and there is some way to distinguish these differences.

    “Model analysis methods are based on the assumption that there are significant differences between the poisoned and benign models and that there is some way to distinguish these differences.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Neural networks have catastrophic forgetting properties and may quickly forget previously acquired concepts.

    “Moreover, neural networks have catastrophic forgetting properties, where neural networks may quickly forget previously acquired concepts.”
4 of 4

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

  • Trimmed mean is described as using the median

    Minor

    The first passage says trimmed mean uses the median value for each parameter. The later definition says it removes the largest and smallest values and uses the mean of those remaining.

1 of 1

Citations

Cites

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Show all 87 references

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Fu, Label inference attacks against vertical federated learning, 1
  2. Li, Learning to attack federated learning: A model-based reinforcement learning attack framework, 1

Cited by

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Items 101–200 of 211

Metadata

Authors
Xia, G., Chen, J., Yu, C., & Ma, J.
Affiliations
National University of Defense Technology (CN)
Venue
IEEE Access
Published
2023
Volume
11
Pages
10708-10722
ISSN
2169-3536 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4317795078
Cited by
212
References
87
Citations by year
2026: 78 · 2025: 76 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 11
FWCI
19.90
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • IEEE Access (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Cryptography and Data Security
Keywords
federated learning, poisoning attacks, attack classification, defense strategy, privacy preservation, malicious clients

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