Papers › MDTD: A Multi Domain Trojan Detector for Deep Neural Networks

MDTD: A Multi Domain Trojan Detector for Deep Neural Networks

30 Aug 2023arXiv:2308.15673archive 2025-07-28

Arezoo Rajabi, Surudhi Asokraj, Fengqing Jiang, Luyao Niu, Bhaskar Ramasubramanian, Jim Ritcey, Radha Poovendran

Machine learning models that use deep neural networks (DNNs) are vulnerable to backdoor attacks. An adversary carrying out a backdoor attack embeds a predefined perturbation called a trigger into a small subset of input samples and trains the DNN such that the presence of the trigger in the input results in an adversary-desired output class. Such adversarial retraining however needs to ensure that outputs for inputs without the trigger remain unaffected and provide high classification accuracy on clean samples. In this paper, we propose MDTD, a Multi-Domain Trojan Detector for DNNs, which detects inputs containing a Trojan trigger at testing time. MDTD does not require knowledge of trigger-embedding strategy of the attacker and can be applied to a pre-trained DNN model with image, audio, or graph-based inputs. MDTD leverages an insight that input samples containing a Trojan trigger are located relatively farther away from a decision boundary than clean samples. MDTD estimates the distance to a decision boundary using adversarial learning methods and uses this distance to infer whether a test-time input sample is Trojaned or not. We evaluate MDTD against state-of-the-art Trojan detection methods across five widely used image-based datasets: CIFAR100, CIFAR10, GTSRB, SVHN, and Flowers102; four graph-based datasets: AIDS, WinMal, Toxicant, and COLLAB; and the SpeechCommand audio dataset. MDTD effectively identifies samples that contain different types of Trojan triggers. We evaluate MDTD against adaptive attacks where an adversary trains a robust DNN to increase (decrease) distance of benign (Trojan) inputs from a decision boundary.

PaperPDFCodeCode Syntology ran

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

For agents, Syntology's MCP tool lists every function and class Syntology harvested from this paper and whether it ran (how to connect): get_harvested_code_for_paper(arxiv_id="2308.15673")

Code

Syntology Ran 3 of 3 code samples harvested from 1 repository linked to this paper; 0 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 1 ran · our draft was wrong; 2 ran with no contract checked.

By repository: official repository: 3 samples from 1 repository, 3 ran. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.

rajabia/mdtd officialmentioned in paperpytorch report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

3 samples harvested; 3 ran; 0 honoured the contract we drafted; 0 have no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.

1ran · our draft was wrong
2ran

Licence: 3 of the 3 samples are pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.

Harvested from rajabia/mdtd. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.

Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.

Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted. community: Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.

audio_troj_setting rajabia/mdtd/DataSets.py official repository ran no licence file found · pointer only · 962c8cbaf17f1952 · report
conv3x3 rajabia/mdtd/Models.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong no licence file found · pointer only · 00e569acd6b45ef0 · report
eval_model rajabia/mdtd/trainmodels.py official repository ran no licence file found · pointer only · 6f04f58d8c4d5473 · report

Tasks

Backdoor Attack

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections