DeepFeature: Guiding adversarial testing for deep neural network systems using robust features

With the deployment of Deep Neural Network (DNN) systems in security-critical fields, more and more researchers are concerned about DNN robustness. Unfortunately, DNNs are vulnerable to adversarial attacks and produce completely wrong outputs. This inspired numerous testing works devoted to improving the adversarial robustness of DNNs. Coverage and uncertainty criteria were proposed to guide sample selections for DNN retraining. However, they are greatly limited to evaluating DNN abnormal behaviors rather than locating the root cause of adversarial vulnerability. This work aims to bridge this gap. We propose an adversarial testing framework, DeepFeature, using robust features. DeepFeature generates robust features related to the model decision-making. It locates the weak features within these features that fail to be transformed by the DNN. They are the main culprits of vulnerability. DeepFeature selects diverse samples containing weak features for adversarial retraining. Our evaluation shows that DeepFeature significantly improves overall robustness, average improved by 77.83%, and individual robustness, average improved by 42.81‰, of the models in adversarial testing. Compared with coverage and uncertainty criteria, these two performances are improved by 3.93% and 15.00% in DeepFeature, respectively. The positive correlation coefficient between DeepFeature and improved robustness can achieve 0.858, and the $p$-value is 0.001.