Concept-based Adversarial Attack: a Probabilistic Perspective

ICLR 2026 Conference Submission17950 Authors

Keywords: Adversarial Attack, Probabilistic Generative Models, Diffusion Models

TL;DR: Beyond single-image perturbations, we generate adversarial examples from scratch that retain the concept’s original meaning, while preserving the same mathematical consistency as traditional methods.

Abstract: We propose a concept-based adversarial attack framework that extends beyond single-image perturbations by adopting a probabilistic perspective. Rather than modifying a single image, our method operates on an entire concept - represented by a probabilistic generative model or a set of images - to generate diverse adversarial examples. Preserving the concept is essential, as it ensures that the resulting adversarial images remain identifiable as instances of the original underlying category or identity. By sampling from this concept-based adversarial distribution, we generate images that maintain the original concept but vary in pose, viewpoint, or background, thereby misleading the classifier. Mathematically, this framework remains consistent with traditional adversarial attacks in a principled manner. Our theoretical and empirical results demonstrate that concept-based adversarial attacks yield more diverse adversarial examples and effectively preserve the underlying concept, while achieving higher attack efficiency.

Primary Area: probabilistic methods (Bayesian methods, variational inference, sampling, UQ, etc.)

Submission Number: 17950