When your AI becomes a target: AI security incidents and best practices

Grosse, Kathrin;Bieringer, Lukas;Besold, Tarek R.;Biggio, Battista;Alahi, Alexandre

2024-01-01

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Abstract

In contrast to vast academic efforts to study AI security, few real-world reports of AI security incidents exist. Released incidents prevent a thorough investigation of the attackers' motives, as crucial information about the company and AI application is missing. As a consequence, it often remains unknown how to avoid incidents. We tackle this gap and combine previous reports with freshly collected incidents to a small database of 32 AI security incidents. We analyze the attackers' target and goal, influencing factors, causes, and mitigations. Many incidents stem from non-compliance with best practices in security and privacy-enhancing technologies. In the case of direct AI attacks, access control may provide some mitigation, but there is little scientific work on best practices. Our paper is thus a call for action to address these gaps.