Adversarial Classification: Necessary conditions and geometric flows

Nicolas Garcia Trillos, Ryan Murray

Published 2020-11-21Version 1

We study a version of adversarial classification where an adversary is empowered to corrupt data inputs up to some distance $\varepsilon$, using tools from variational analysis. In particular, we describe necessary conditions associated with the optimal classifier subject to such an adversary. Using the necessary conditions, we derive a geometric evolution equation which can be used to track the change in classification boundaries as $\varepsilon$ varies. This evolution equation may be described as an uncoupled system of differential equations in one dimension, or as a mean curvature type equation in higher dimension. In one dimension we rigorously prove that one can use the initial value problem starting from $\varepsilon=0$, which is simply the Bayes classifier, in order to solve for the global minimizer of the adversarial problem. Numerical examples illustrating these ideas are also presented.