Backdoor Learning: A Survey

Backdoor attack intends to embed hidden backdoor into deep neural networks (DNNs), such that the attacked model performs well on benign samples, whereas its prediction will be maliciously changed if the hidden backdoor is activated by the attacker-defined trigger. Backdoor attack could happen when the training process is not fully controlled by the user, such as training on third-party datasets or adopting third-party models, which poses a new and realistic threat. Although backdoor learning is an emerging and rapidly growing research area, its systematic review, however, remains blank. In this paper, we present the first comprehensive survey of this realm. We summarize and categorize existing backdoor attacks and defenses based on their characteristics, and provide a unified framework for analyzing poisoning-based backdoor attacks. Besides, we also analyze the relation between backdoor attacks and the relevant fields ($i.e.,$ adversarial attack and data poisoning), and summarize the benchmark datasets. Finally, we briefly outline certain future research directions relying upon reviewed works.