{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/the-devil-s-advocate-shattering-the-illusion","title":"The Devil's Advocate: Shattering the Illusion of Unexploitable Data using Diffusion Models","arxiv_id":"2303.08500","date":"2023-03-15","proceeding":null,"authors":["Hadi M. Dolatabadi","Sarah Erfani","Christopher Leckie"],"abstract":"Protecting personal data against exploitation of machine learning models is crucial. Recently, availability attacks have shown great promise to provide an extra layer of protection against the unauthorized use of data to train neural networks. These methods aim to add imperceptible noise to clean data so that the neural networks cannot extract meaningful patterns from the protected data, claiming that they can make personal data \"unexploitable.\" This paper provides a strong countermeasure against such approaches, showing that unexploitable data might only be an illusion. In particular, we leverage the power of diffusion models and show that a carefully designed denoising process can counteract the effectiveness of the data-protecting perturbations. We rigorously analyze our algorithm, and theoretically prove that the amount of required denoising is directly related to the magnitude of the data-protecting perturbations. Our approach, called AVATAR, delivers state-of-the-art performance against a suite of recent availability attacks in various scenarios, outperforming adversarial training even under distribution mismatch between the diffusion model and the protected data. Our findings call for more research into making personal data unexploitable, showing that this goal is far from over. Our implementation is available at this repository: https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/AVATAR.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.08500v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.08500v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"the-devil-s-advocate-shattering-the-illusion","repo_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"MIT"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"denoising","task_name":"Denoising"}],"methods":[{"method_slug":"diffusion","method_name":"Diffusion"}],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2303.08500","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2303.08500"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"MIT"}}],"summary":{"ran_draft_wrong":4,"ran":1,"ran_fixture":1,"ran_honours":2,"unverified":9},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":17,"ran":8,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"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"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"c3a6b977022957cb","entry":"Normalize","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"ddpm/unet_ddpm.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/ddpm/unet_ddpm.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"OUTPUT_MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"deterministic","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"c3a6b977022957cb"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"cfd76fd0d89574a4","entry":"approx_standard_normal_cdf","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"guided_diffusion/losses.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/guided_diffusion/losses.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"invariant","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"cfd76fd0d89574a4"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"cd33283d615fb3d7","entry":"discretized_gaussian_log_likelihood","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"guided_diffusion/losses.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/guided_diffusion/losses.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"invariant","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"cd33283d615fb3d7"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"cadb98df0b43c793","entry":"dumps_data","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"AVATAR_sanitization.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/AVATAR_sanitization.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"cadb98df0b43c793"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"cb49209c125de1b4","entry":"get_timestep_embedding","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"ddpm/unet_ddpm.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/ddpm/unet_ddpm.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_fixture","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"RAISES","metamorphic_tier":"invariant","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"cb49209c125de1b4"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"3137073275f8c21a","entry":"nonlinearity","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"ddpm/unet_ddpm.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/ddpm/unet_ddpm.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"invariant","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"3137073275f8c21a"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"cf2798b666b231ca","entry":"normal_kl","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"guided_diffusion/losses.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/guided_diffusion/losses.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_honours","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"HONOURS","metamorphic_tier":"invariant","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"cf2798b666b231ca"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"a2847ea5f23c1e07","entry":"onehot","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"ISS_augs.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/ISS_augs.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_honours","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"HONOURS","metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"a2847ea5f23c1e07"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"a3cedf1d509b37f2","entry":"DenseNet121","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"models/DenseNet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/models/DenseNet.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"a3cedf1d509b37f2"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"db62cd85a5a44695","entry":"DenseNet169","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"models/DenseNet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/models/DenseNet.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"db62cd85a5a44695"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"3ef0755182d96334","entry":"DenseNet201","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"models/DenseNet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/models/DenseNet.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"3ef0755182d96334"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"336a886b8ba6ecb3","entry":"ResNet18","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"models/ResNet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/models/ResNet.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"336a886b8ba6ecb3"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"d8df895be3c7b30e","entry":"ResNet34","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"models/ResNet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/models/ResNet.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"d8df895be3c7b30e"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"4a3e54f8626a4284","entry":"ResNet50","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"models/ResNet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/models/ResNet.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"4a3e54f8626a4284"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"4cabce0764d52cf1","entry":"cross_entropy","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"ISS_augs.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/ISS_augs.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"4cabce0764d52cf1"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"2bc7277fbb33cc3f","entry":"loads_data","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"AVATAR_evaluation.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/AVATAR_evaluation.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"2bc7277fbb33cc3f"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"b3d09a4dd10e16e3","entry":"rand_bbox","repo":"hmdolatabadi/avatar","repo_kind":"official","path":"ISS_augs.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hmdolatabadi/avatar/blob/HEAD/ISS_augs.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"b3d09a4dd10e16e3"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}