Learning to Transform Dynamically for Better Adversarial Transferability
Authors: Rongyi Zhu, Zeliang Zhang, Susan Liang, Zhuo Liu, Chenliang Xu

Adversarial examples crafted by adding perturbations imperceptible to humans can deceive neural networks. Recent studies identify the adversarial transferability across various models i.e. the cross-model attack ability of adversarial samples. To enhance such adversarial transferability existing input transformation-based methods diversify input data with transformation augmentation. However their effectiveness is limited by the finite number of available transformations. In our study we introduce a novel approach named Learning to Transform (L2T). L2T increases the diversity of transformed images by selecting the optimal combination of operations from a pool of candidates consequently improving adversarial transferability. We conceptualize the selection of optimal transformation combinations as a trajectory optimization problem and employ a reinforcement learning strategy to effectively solve the problem. Comprehensive experiments on the ImageNet dataset as well as practical tests with Google Vision and GPT-4V reveal that L2T surpasses current methodologies in enhancing adversarial transferability thereby confirming its effectiveness and practical significance.