ActiveDaemon: Unconscious DNN Dormancy and Waking Up via User-specific Invisible Token

Ge Ren

Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2024 · Day 2 · Policy & Intelligence

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have become indispensable assets in modern commerce, powering everything from natural language processing to advanced content generation. However, the substantial investment in resources required to develop these sophisticated models makes them highly vulnerable to intellectual property (IP) infringement. Traditional IP protection mechanisms, such as **passive watermarking**, primarily embed identifiers within DNNs to verify ownership *after* a counterfeit model has emerged and commercial damage has already occurred. This reactive approach leaves model owners exposed to irreversible losses from unauthorized queries and model extraction.