defense 2025

Resilient Peer-to-peer Learning based on Adaptive Aggregation

Chandreyee Bhowmick , Xenofon Koutsoukos

0 citations · DCAI

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Published on arXiv

2501.04610

Data Poisoning Attack

OWASP ML Top 10 — ML02

Key Finding

Proposed adaptive aggregation outperforms existing Byzantine-resilient baselines in accuracy across multiple ML tasks and diverse attack models under non-iid data distributions.

Adaptive Aggregation for Resilient P2P Learning

Novel technique introduced


Collaborative learning in peer-to-peer networks offers the benefits of distributed learning while mitigating the risks associated with single points of failure inherent in centralized servers. However, adversarial workers pose potential threats by attempting to inject malicious information into the network. Thus, ensuring the resilience of peer-to-peer learning emerges as a pivotal research objective. The challenge is exacerbated in the presence of non-convex loss functions and non-iid data distributions. This paper introduces a resilient aggregation technique tailored for such scenarios, aimed at fostering similarity among peers' learning processes. The aggregation weights are determined through an optimization procedure, and use the loss function computed using the neighbor's models and individual private data, thereby addressing concerns regarding data privacy in distributed machine learning. Theoretical analysis demonstrates convergence of parameters with non-convex loss functions and non-iid data distributions. Empirical evaluations across three distinct machine learning tasks support the claims. The empirical findings, which encompass a range of diverse attack models, also demonstrate improved accuracy when compared to existing methodologies.


Key Contributions

  • Novel adaptive aggregation rule for peer-to-peer distributed learning that weights neighbors by loss-based similarity to the local learner's data
  • Theoretical convergence proof under non-convex loss functions and non-iid data distributions with local strong convexity assumptions
  • Empirical evaluation across three ML tasks demonstrating superior accuracy versus baselines under a diverse set of adversarial attack models

🛡️ Threat Analysis

Data Poisoning Attack

Defends against adversarial (Byzantine) workers injecting malicious model updates in a distributed peer-to-peer learning network — this is the canonical Byzantine poisoning threat in distributed ML, which falls under ML02's scope of robust aggregation defenses against malicious participants.


Details

Domains
federated-learning
Model Types
federated
Threat Tags
training_timegrey_box
Applications
distributed machine learningpeer-to-peer collaborative learning