Research on Privacy Protection in Federated Learning Combining Distillation Defense and Blockchain

Abstract

Traditional federated learning addresses the data security issues arising from the need to centralize client datasets on a central server for model training. However, this approach still poses privacy protection risks. For instance, central servers cannot verify privacy leaks resulting from poisoning attacks by malicious clients. Additionally, adversarial sample attacks can infer specific samples from the original data by testing the local models on client devices. This paper proposes a federated learning privacy protection method combining distillation defense technology with blockchain architecture. The method utilizes distillation defense technology to reduce the sensitivity of client devices participating in federated learning to perturbations and enhance their ability to resist adversarial sample attacks locally. This not only reduces communication overhead and improves learning efficiency but also enhances the model’s generalization ability. Furthermore, the method leverages the “decentralized” nature of blockchain architecture as a trusted record-keeping mechanism to audit information interactions among clients and shared model parameters. This addresses privacy leakage issues resulting from poisoning attacks by some clients during the model construction process. Simulation experiment results demonstrate that the proposed method, compared with traditional federated learning, ensures model convergence, detects malicious clients, and improves the participation level of highly reputable clients. Moreover, by reducing the sensitivity of local clients to perturbations, it enhances their ability to effectively resist adversarial sample attacks.