arXiv subjects

Shahinul Hoque

Publications and source records attributed to Shahinul Hoque.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Pseudo-Feature Padding: A Lightweight Defense Against False Data Injection in Power Grids

Deep Neural Networks DNNs have achieved remarkable accuracy in various tasks including their application in CyberPhysical Systems CPS for detecting False Data Injection Attacks FDIA during critical operations However the unique infrastructure of CPS makes DNNs vulnerable to exploitation by attackers aiming to evade detection Additionally the distinct nature of CPS presents challenges for conventional defense mechanisms against FDIA This paper proposes an innovative defense framework that strengthens DNNs against such attacks by introducing an additional input layer that performs padding in the input samples using pseudofeature values derived from the inputs statistical distribution This padding increases the input dimensionality in a randomized and dataaware manner making adversarial attacks computationally infeasible due to the nontransferable nature of crafted perturbations and the unpredictability of the padded structure Our method is lightweight modelagnostic and requires no modifications to the core architecture making it highly deployable in realworld CPS settings We evaluated our framework on critical power grid applications such as state estimation using the IEEE 14bus 30bus 118bus and 300bus systems Experiments under adversarial settings demonstrate that our padding strategy significantly improves model robustness with negligible impact on performance and effectively mitigates attacks that would otherwise bypass conventional defenses

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

Token Inflation: How Dishonest Providers Can Overcharge for Large Language Model Usage

Per-token billing is now the standard pricing model for commercial large language models (LLMs), so the honesty of reported token counts directly affects what users pay. We show that this kind of billing is hard to audit by design: providers hide the model, the tokenizer, and the execution to protect their IP, mitigate jailbreaks, and preserve user privacy, which means an auditor can only inspect proofs the provider supplies. The audit therefore reduces to a consistency check on the provider's own reports. We call this a trust paradox: every audit must trust some artifact, but current frameworks trust exactly the ones a provider has the strongest reason to manipulate. We study three recent token auditing frameworks and show that a provider with ordinary commercial capabilities can systematically inflate billed token counts. In the most permissive setting, hidden reasoning usage can be inflated by 1,469% on average without detection. At current frontier reasoning prices, that turns a \$100 honest bill into roughly a \$1,569 bill on the same query. Even when the user can see the full reasoning string, tokenization ambiguity alone still allows 50.85% over-reporting below the detection threshold. These results suggest the problem is not in any specific auditor but in any audit whose evidence comes from the audited party. Restoring honest billing will require verification that ties reported token counts to evidence the provider does not control, such as trusted execution attestation, cryptographic proofs of inference, or third-party re-execution.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Accuracy is Not Enough: Poisoning Interpretability in Federated Learning via Color Skew

As machine learning models are increasingly deployed in safety-critical domains, visual explanation techniques have become essential tools for supporting transparency. In this work, we reveal a new class of attacks that compromise model interpretability without affecting accuracy. Specifically, we show that small color perturbations applied by adversarial clients in a federated learning setting can shift a model's saliency maps away from semantically meaningful regions while keeping the prediction unchanged. The proposed saliency-aware attack framework, called Chromatic Perturbation Module, systematically crafts adversarial examples by altering the color contrast between foreground and background in a way that disrupts explanation fidelity. These perturbations accumulate across training rounds, poisoning the global model's internal feature attributions in a stealthy and persistent manner. Our findings challenge a common assumption in model auditing that correct predictions imply faithful explanations and demonstrate that interpretability itself can be an attack surface. We evaluate this vulnerability across multiple datasets and show that standard training pipelines are insufficient to detect or mitigate explanation degradation, especially in the federated learning setting, where subtle color perturbations are harder to discern. Our attack reduces peak activation overlap in Grad-CAM explanations by up to 35% while preserving classification accuracy above 96% on all evaluated datasets.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2024

Effects of Real-Life Traffic Sign Alteration on YOLOv7- an Object Recognition Model

The widespread adoption of Image Processing has propelled Object Recognition (OR) models into essential roles across various applications, demonstrating the power of AI and enabling crucial services. Among the applications, traffic sign recognition stands out as a popular research topic, given its critical significance in the development of autonomous vehicles. Despite their significance, real-world challenges, such as alterations to traffic signs, can negatively impact the performance of OR models. This study investigates the influence of altered traffic signs on the accuracy and effectiveness of object recognition, employing a publicly available dataset to introduce alterations in shape, color, content, visibility, angles and background. Focusing on the YOLOv7 (You Only Look Once) model, the study demonstrates a notable decline in detection and classification accuracy when confronted with traffic signs in unusual conditions including the altered traffic signs. Notably, the alterations explored in this study are benign examples and do not involve algorithms used for generating adversarial machine learning samples. This study highlights the significance of enhancing the robustness of object detection models in real-life scenarios and the need for further investigation in this area to improve their accuracy and reliability.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2024

HRI Challenges Influencing Low Usage of Robotic Systems in Disaster Response and Rescue Operations

The breakthrough in AI and Machine Learning has brought a new revolution in robotics, resulting in the construction of more sophisticated robotic systems. Not only can these robotic systems benefit all domains, but also can accomplish tasks that seemed to be unimaginable a few years ago. From swarms of autonomous small robots working together to more very heavy and large objects, to seemingly indestructible robots capable of going to the harshest environments, we can see robotic systems designed for every task imaginable. Among them, a key scenario where robotic systems can benefit is in disaster response scenarios and rescue operations. Robotic systems are capable of successfully conducting tasks such as removing heavy materials, utilizing multiple advanced sensors for finding objects of interest, moving through debris and various inhospitable environments, and not the least have flying capabilities. Even with so much potential, we rarely see the utilization of robotic systems in disaster response scenarios and rescue missions. Many factors could be responsible for the low utilization of robotic systems in such scenarios. One of the key factors involve challenges related to Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) issues. Therefore, in this paper, we try to understand the HRI challenges involving the utilization of robotic systems in disaster response and rescue operations. Furthermore, we go through some of the proposed robotic systems designed for disaster response scenarios and identify the HRI challenges of those systems. Finally, we try to address the challenges by introducing ideas from various proposed research works.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2024

Smart Driver Monitoring Robotic System to Enhance Road Safety : A Comprehensive Review

The future of transportation is being shaped by technology, and one revolutionary step in improving road safety is the incorporation of robotic systems into driver monitoring infrastructure. This literature review explores the current landscape of driver monitoring systems, ranging from traditional physiological parameter monitoring to advanced technologies such as facial recognition to steering analysis. Exploring the challenges faced by existing systems, the review then investigates the integration of robots as intelligent entities within this framework. These robotic systems, equipped with artificial intelligence and sophisticated sensors, not only monitor but actively engage with the driver, addressing cognitive and emotional states in real-time. The synthesis of existing research reveals a dynamic interplay between human and machine, offering promising avenues for innovation in adaptive, personalized, and ethically responsible human-robot interactions for driver monitoring. This review establishes a groundwork for comprehending the intricacies and potential avenues within this dynamic field. It encourages further investigation and advancement at the intersection of human-robot interaction and automotive safety, introducing a novel direction. This involves various sections detailing technological enhancements that can be integrated to propose an innovative and improved driver monitoring system.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2023

Deep Learning model integrity checking mechanism using watermarking technique

In response to the growing popularity of Machine Learning (ML) techniques to solve problems in various industries, various malicious groups have started to target such techniques in their attack plan. However, as ML models are constantly updated with continuous data, it is very hard to monitor the integrity of ML models. One probable solution would be to use hashing techniques. Regardless of how that would mean re-hashing the model each time the model is trained on newer data which is computationally expensive and not a feasible solution for ML models that are trained on continuous data. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a model integrity-checking mechanism that uses model watermarking techniques to monitor the integrity of ML models. We then demonstrate that our proposed technique can monitor the integrity of ML models even when the model is further trained on newer data with a low computational cost. Furthermore, the integrity checking mechanism can be used on Deep Learning models that work on complex data distributions such as Cyber-Physical System applications.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Mitigating Adversarial Effects of False Data Injection Attacks in Power Grid

Deep Neural Networks have proven to be highly accurate at a variety of tasks in recent years. The benefits of Deep Neural Networks have also been embraced in power grids to detect False Data Injection Attacks (FDIA) while conducting critical tasks like state estimation. However, the vulnerabilities of DNNs along with the distinct infrastructure of the cyber-physical-system (CPS) can favor the attackers to bypass the detection mechanism. Moreover, the divergent nature of CPS engenders limitations to the conventional defense mechanisms for False Data Injection Attacks. In this paper, we propose a DNN framework with an additional layer that utilizes randomization to mitigate the adversarial effect by padding the inputs. The primary advantage of our method is when deployed to a DNN model it has a trivial impact on the model's performance even with larger padding sizes. We demonstrate the favorable outcome of the framework through simulation using the IEEE 14-bus, 30-bus, 118-bus, and 300-bus systems. Furthermore to justify the framework we select attack techniques that generate subtle adversarial examples that can bypass the detection mechanism effortlessly.

cs.CR↗