Signal Processing - November 2017 - 54

classifiers, [10] suggests that higher-degree
classifiers tend to be more robust to perturbations, as they capture the "stronger"
(and more visual) concept that separates the
classes (e.g., the orientation of the stripe in
Figure S1 in "Robustness and Risk: A Toy
Example"). For neural networks, however, the
relation between the flexibility of the architecture (e.g., depth and breadth) and adversarial robustness is not well understood and
remains an open problem.

Random noise
In the random noise regime, data points are
perturbed by noise having a random direction in the input space.
Unlike the adversarial case, the computation of random noise
does not require knowledge of the classifier; it is therefore crucial
for state-of-the-art classifiers to be robust to this noise regime. We
measure the pointwise robustness to random noise by setting R
to be a direction sampled uniformly at random from the , 2 unit
sphere S d -1 in X (where d denotes the dimension of X ) . Therefore, (4) becomes
	

r v* (x) = argmin r
r ! {av: a ! R}

2

subject to f (x + r) ! f (x), (6)

where v is a direction sampled uniformly at random from the
unit sphere S d -1 . The pointwise robustness is then defined as
the , 2 norm of the perturbation, i.e., r v* (x) 2 .
The robustness of classifiers to random noise has previously
been studied empirically in [1] and theoretically in [10] and
[18]. Empirical investigation suggests that state-of-the-art classifiers are much more robust to random noise than to adversarial perturbations, i.e., the norm of the noise r v* (x) required to
change the label of the classifier can be several orders of magnitudes larger than that of the adversarial perturbation. This
result is confirmed theoretically, as linear classifiers in [10]
and nonlinear classifiers in [18] are shown to have a robustness
to random noise that behaves as
r v*(x)

2

* (x) j
= H ` d r adv
2

* (x)
with high probability, where r adv
2 denotes the robustness
to adversarial perturbations [(4) with R = X ] . In other words,
this result shows that, in high-dimensional classification settings (i.e., large d ), classifiers can be robust to random noise,
even if the pointwise adversarial robustness of the classifier is
very small.

Semirandom noise
Finally, the semirandom noise regime generalizes this additive noise model to random subspaces S of dimension m # d.
Specifically, in this perturbation regime, an adversarial perturbation is sought within a random subspace S of dimension m.
That is, the semirandom noise is defined as follows:
	

r S* (x) = argmin r
r!S

54

2

Note that, when m = 1, this semirandom
noise regime precisely coincides with the
random noise regime, whereas m = d corresponds to the adversarial perturbation regime
defined previously. For this generalized noise
regime, a precise relation between the robustness to semirandom and adversarial perturbation exists [18], as it is shown that

With the dramatic increase
of digital data and the
development of new
computing architectures,
deep learning has been
developing rapidly as a
predominant framework
for data representation
that can contribute in
solving very diverse tasks.

subject to f (x + r) ! f (x). (7)

r S* (x)

2

= Hc

d r * (x) .
2m
m adv

This result shows in particular that, even
when the dimension m is chosen as a small
fraction of d, it is still possible to find
small perturbations that cause data misclassification. In other
words, classifiers are not robust to semirandom noise that is
only mildly adversarial and overwhelmingly random [18]. This
implies that deep networks can be fooled by very diverse small
perturbations, as these can be found along random subspaces
of dimension m % d.

Robustness to structured transformations
In visual tasks, it is not only crucial to have classifiers that are
robust against additive perturbations as described previously.
It is also equally important to achieve invariance to structured
nuisance variables such as illumination changes, occlusions, or
standard local geometric transformations of the image. Specifically, when images undergo such structured deformations,
it is desirable that the estimated label remains the same.
One of the main strengths of deep neural network classifiers with respect to traditional shallow classifiers is that
the former achieve higher levels of invariance [19] to transformations. To verify this claim, several empirical works
have been introduced. In [6], a formal method is proposed
that leverages the generalized robustness definition of (2)
to measure the robustness of classifiers to arbitrary transformation groups. The robustness to structured transformations
is precisely measured by setting the admissible perturbation space R to be the set of transformations (e.g., translations, rotations, dilation) and the perturbation operator T
of (2) to be the warping operator transforming the coordinates of the image. In addition, · R is set to measure the
change in appearance between the original and transformed
images. Specifically, · R is defined to be the length of
the shortest path on the nonlinear manifold of transformed
images T = {Tr (x): r ! R} . Using this approach, it is possible to quantify the amount of change that the image should
undergo to cause the classifier to make the wrong decision.
Despite improving the invariance over shallow networks,
the method in [6] shows that deep classifiers are still not
robust to sufficiently small deformations on simple visual
classification tasks. In [20], the authors assess the robustness
of face recognition deep networks to physically realizable
structured perturbations. In particular, wearing e- yeglass
frames is shown to cause state-of-the-art face-recognition
algorithms to misclassify. In [7], the robustness to other

IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE

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November 2017

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Signal Processing - November 2017

Signal Processing - November 2017 - Cover1
Signal Processing - November 2017 - Cover2
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 1
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 2
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 3
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 4
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 5
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 6
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 7
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 8
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 9
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 10
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 11
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 12
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 13
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 14
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 15
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 16
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 17
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 18
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 19
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 20
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 21
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 22
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 23
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 24
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 25
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 26
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 27
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 28
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 29
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 30
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 31
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 32
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 33
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 34
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 35
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 36
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 37
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 38
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 39
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 40
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 41
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 42
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 43
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 44
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 45
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 46
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 47
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 48
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 49
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 50
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 51
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 52
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 53
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 54
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 55
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 56
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 57
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 58
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 59
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 60
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 61
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 62
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 63
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 64
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 65
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 66
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 67
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 68
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 69
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 70
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 71
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 72
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 73
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 74
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 75
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 76
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 77
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 78
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 79
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 80
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 81
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 82
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 83
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 84
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 85
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 86
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 87
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 88
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 89
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 90
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 91
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 92
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 93
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 94
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 95
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 96
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 97
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 98
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 99
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 100
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 101
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 102
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 103
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 104
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 105
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 106
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 107
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 108
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 109
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 110
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 111
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 112
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 113
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 114
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 115
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 116
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 117
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 118
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 119
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 120
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 121
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 122
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 123
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 124
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 125
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 126
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 127
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 128
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 129
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 130
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 131
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 132
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 133
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 134
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 135
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 136
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 137
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 138
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 139
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 140
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 141
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 142
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 143
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 144
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 145
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 146
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 147
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 148
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 149
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 150
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 151
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 152
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 153
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 154
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 155
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 156
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 157
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 158
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 159
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 160
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 161
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 162
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 163
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 164
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 165
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 166
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 167
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 168
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 169
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 170
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 171
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 172
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 173
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 174
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 175
Signal Processing - November 2017 - 176
Signal Processing - November 2017 - Cover3
Signal Processing - November 2017 - Cover4
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