arXiv:2605.27416quant-phcs.AI2026-05中稿 · IJCAI

提出量子联邦学习电路级后门攻击,揭示单个恶意客户端即可严重破坏模型性能。

Can Quantum Federated Learning Withstand Circuit-Level Backdoors?

论文配图:Can Quantum Federated Learning Withstand Circuit-Level Backdoors?
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 设计四类隐蔽量子攻击:格罗弗、泡利、比特翻转与符号翻转。
  • 实验表明单个恶意客户端使准确率下降超50%,主流防御仍无法根除风险。
  • 攻击通过靠近正常更新范数隐藏自身,适合研究量子安全与联邦学习的学者。

量子联邦学习(QFL)继承了联邦优化对恶意客户端的核心脆弱性,同时引入了变分电路训练和测量驱动梯度带来的攻击面。本文提出一种新型电路级后门威胁(CULT)模型,形式化了四类利用量子感知机制的隐蔽攻击:格罗弗(Grover)、泡利(Pauli)、比特翻转(Bit-flip)与符号翻转(Sign-flip)。这些攻击可作用于训练中与训练后阶段,严重破坏学习过程。我们在标准光滑性假设下建立了严格的理论基础,证明攻击的隐蔽性。在非独立同分布(non-IID)划分下的MNIST与CIFAR-10数据集上,实验显示即使仅一个恶意客户端,经FedAvg聚合后也能导致显著准确率下降。尽管主流防御方法如Krum、Multi-Krum、FoolsGold、FLGuardian与Mud-HoG在多数场景下缓解了性能损失,但在最坏情况下仍无法避免准确率下降高达50%。分析进一步表明,恶意更新通过保持在良性更新范数附近,有效隐藏自身,从而逃避检测。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Quantum Federated Learning (QFL) inherits the core vulnerability of federated optimization to malicious clients, while also introducing an attack surface from variational circuit training and measurement-driven gradients. This work proposes a novel CircUit-Level backdoor Threat (CULT) model that formalizes four stealthy attacks by exploiting quantum-aware mechanisms, including Grover, Pauli, Bit-flip, and Sign-flip. By enabling malicious clients on both in-training and post-training surfaces, these attacks can critically undermine the learning process. We establish a rigorous theoretical foundation to demonstrate attack stealthiness under standard smoothness assumptions. Experiments on the MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets with non-IID splits and varying fractions of malicious clients show that even a single malicious client can induce severe accuracy degradation under FedAvg aggregation. While popular defenses, including Krum, Multi-Krum, FoolsGold, FLGuardian, and Mud-HoG, reduce degradation in many regimes, they fail to eliminate worst-case failure cases, where accuracy drops up to 50\%. The experimental analysis further reveals that under the CULT model, malicious updates effectively mask their presence by staying close to benign norms, thereby helping attackers evade detection.

量子机器学习联邦学习安全攻防

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