APGP: Accuracy-Preserving Generative Perturbation for Defending Against Model Cloning Attacks

Well-trained Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are valuable intellectual properties. Recent studies show that adversaries only with black-box query access can steal the functionality of DNNs by using knowledge distillation (KD) techniques. In this paper, we propose a novel formulation to defend against model cloning attacks. Then we implement our defense as a plug-and-play generative perturbation model, dubbed as Accuracy-Preserving Generative Perturbation (APGP). Our method is the first to effectively defend against KD-based model cloning without damaging model accuracy. Numerous experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our defense across different datasets and DNN model cloning attacks, and the advances compared to existing methods.