defense arXiv Apr 28, 2026 · 23d ago
Yuxuan Hou · Qiuzhen College · Tsinghua University
Proves NTK neural networks achieve minimax optimal adversarial robustness with early stopping but fail catastrophically when overfitted
Input Manipulation Attack tabular
Deep learning models are widely deployed in safety-critical domains, but remain vulnerable to adversarial attacks. In this paper, we study the adversarial robustness of NTK neural networks in the context of nonparametric regression. We establish minimax optimal rates for adversarial regression in Sobolev spaces and then show that NTK neural networks, trained via gradient flow with early stopping, can achieve this optimal rate. However, in the overfitting regime, we prove that the minimum norm interpolant is vulnerable to adversarial perturbations.
traditional_ml Qiuzhen College · Tsinghua University