CAAP: Capture-Aware Adversarial Patch Attacks on Palmprint Recognition Models
Authors: Renyang Liu, Jiale Li, Jie Zhang, Cong Wu, Xiaojun Jia, Shuxin Li, Wei Zhou, Kwok-Yan Lam, +1 more
Organizations: Institute of Data Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117602, Singapore · Centre for Frontier AI Research (CFAR), A*STAR, Singapore, 138634 · School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan University, China, 430072 · College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798 · School of Engineering, Yunnan University, Kunming 650500, China
Palmprint recognition is deployed in security-critical applications, including access control and palm-based payment, due to its contactless acquisition and highly discriminative ridge-and-crease textures. However, the robustness of deep palmprint recognition systems against physically realizable attacks remains insufficiently understood. Existing studies are largely confined to the digital setting and do not adequately account for the texture-dominant nature of palmprint recognition or the distortions introduced during physical acquisition. To address this gap, we propose CAAP, a capture-aware adversarial patch framework for palmprint recognition. CAAP learns a universal patch that can be reused across inputs while remaining effective under realistic acquisition variation. To match the structural characteristics of palmprints, the framework adopts a cross-shaped patch topology, which enlarges spatial coverage under a fixed pixel budget and more effectively disrupts long-range texture continuity. CAAP further integrates three modules: ASIT for input-conditioned patch rendering, RaS for stochastic capture-aware simulation, and MS-DIFE for feature-level identity-disruptive guidance. We evaluate CAAP on the Tongji, IITD, and AISEC datasets against generic CNN backbones and palmprint-specific recognition models. Experiments show that CAAP achieves strong untargeted and targeted attack performance with favorable cross-model and cross-dataset transferability. The results further show that, although adversarial training can partially reduce the attack success rate, substantial residual vulnerability remains. These findings indicate that deep palmprint recognition systems remain vulnerable to physically realizable, capture-aware adversarial patch attacks, underscoring the need for more effective defenses in practice. Code available at https://github.com/ryliu68/CAAP.
Figures & tables
Fig. 1: Training framework of CAAP . A universal cross-shaped patch, specified by a fixed mask M and a learnable texture P , is rendered onto the input ROI through ASIT, which predicts input-conditioned rendering parameters. The composited sample is then processed by RaS to model capture-aware variation during training. In parallel, MS-DIFE extracts multi-scale features from the clean and rendered samples to provide the identity-related objective, while the victim recognizer provides the attack objective. The overall optimization is jointly driven by Ladv , Lid , Ltv , and Lvis .
Ladv(x)←K1Ladv(x),Lid(x)←K1Lid(x)
Algorithm 1 CAAP Training
Fig. 2: Attacking phase of CAAP . After training, the patch texture and the ASIT parameters are fixed. Given a test ROI image x , ASIT predicts the rendering parameters for the current input, and the adversarial sample is generated by a single forward rendering pass without test-time optimization. The resulting sample is then evaluated by the victim recognizer.
xadv=Sθgeo,θpho(x,P,M)
Algorithm 2 CAAP Attacking
Attack
VGG-16
ResNet-18
MobileNetV2
ShuffleNetV2
CompNet
CCNet
CO3Net
AdvPatch
35.40
13.81
78.61
27.65
28.54
7.74
28.83
Patch MI
35.22
12.62
74.93
27.37
30.61
8.79
29.17
Patch PGD
35.58
12.75
70.96
30.87
30.03
8.79
29.28
APPA
35.95
33.20
56.66
91.76
11.74
5.86
24.44
CSPA
38.50
43.56
85.41
98.04
25.89
9.61
25.56
AdvLogo
97.30
95.28
73.66
97.94
66.39
2.93
3.60
TABLE I: The untargeted attack success rate (%) on IITD dataset.
Attack
VGG-16
ResNet-18
MobileNetV2
ShuffleNetV2
CompNet
CCNet
CO3Net
AdvPatch
80.39
100.00
82.50
90.91
49.36
85.77
91.32
Patch MI
80.39
100.00
82.50
45.45
52.09
81.63
72.34
Patch PGD
90.20
28.57
82.50
45.45
51.36
80.84
87.58
APPA
82.35
68.57
75.00
81.82
47.51
60.72
73.53
CSPA
98.75
98.92
96.03
95.93
59.00
94.23
89.45
AdvLogo
54.69
51.04
87.70
53.42
22.92
18.41
35.83
TABLE II: The untargeted attack success rate (%) on Tongji dataset.
Attack
VGG-16
ResNet-18
MobileNetV2
ShuffleNetV2
CompNet
CCNet
CO3Net
AdvPatch
31.42
87.84
48.32
97.90
67.16
24.42
92.37
Patch MI
29.51
89.52
40.13
97.90
66.32
20.42
92.80
Patch PGD
21.02
20.63
69.54
25.46
65.47
19.79
92.37
APPA
95.33
30.61
10.08
97.06
53.89
14.00
87.97
CSPA
94.06
97.90
22.48
97.74
87.79
23.37
95.97
AdvLogo
97.88
97.48
73.66
97.90
12.42
10.95
72.88
TABLE III: The untargeted attack success rate (%) on AISEC dataset.
Attack
VGG-16
ResNet-18
MobileNetV2
ShuffleNetV2
CompNet
CCNet
CO3Net
AdvPatch
0.91
0.53
12.48
2.10
4.73
3.17
20.20
Patch MI
0.91
0.40
6.24
0.84
0.81
4.23
20.88
Patch PGD
0.91
0.53
11.49
1.54
1.04
5.16
20.65
APPA
0.91
0.13
5.82
7.42
0.69
0.70
0.23
AdvLogo
0.91
3.73
12.77
21.57
67.94
13.50
31.60
CSPA
1.46
4.66
23.69
27.03
80.62
23.59
76.64
TABLE IV: The targeted attack success rate (%) on IITD dataset.
Attack
VGG-16
ResNet-18
MobileNetV2
ShuffleNetV2
CompNet
CCNet
CO3Net
AdvPatch
0.29
11.53
8.59
17.67
78.31
49.29
99.51
Patch MI
0.05
0.94
2.91
11.39
74.60
67.61
99.33
Patch PGD
0.27
11.50
8.71
17.06
77.89
71.16
99.75
APPA
0.00
0.00
1.54
4.81
32.62
52.91
98.83
AdvLogo
7.97
10.35
6.77
20.52
95.58
97.96
100.00
CSPA
9.70
18.78
13.78
36.05
96.37
99.68
100.00
TABLE V: The targeted attack success rate (%) on Tongji dataset.
Attack
VGG-16
ResNet-18
MobileNetV2
ShuffleNetV2
CompNet
CCNet
CO3Net
AdvPatch
0.00
0.21
0.63
0.63
34.95
0.00
79.87
Patch MI
1.27
0.42
1.89
2.52
38.53
0.00
91.95
Patch PGD
0.00
0.21
0.84
0.42
37.68
0.00
90.89
APPA
1.27
0.00
2.10
0.84
7.16
0.21
66.31
AdvLogo
0.42
1.47
3.36
7.77
78.74
1.89
94.49
CSPA
1.06
2.31
3.36
14.50
90.11
38.53
98.52
TABLE VI: The targeted attack success rate (%) on AISEC dataset.
Fig. 3: Pairwise cross-model transferability. Each heatmap reports ASR (%) when a patch crafted on a source model (rows) is directly transferred to a target model (columns).
Method
MobileNetV2
ShuffleNetV2
ResNet-18
VGG-16
CompNet
CCNet
CO3Net
Patch PGD
22.17
30.17
73.52
87.05
12.22
0.17
13.61
CSPA
43.75
83.67
84.75
96.28
96.98
41.45
96.60
CAAP s
91.03
96.15
83.47
99.18
60.98
7.95
72.49
CAAP c
92.97
96.53
85.30
89.50
98.71
79.25
96.70
TABLE VII: Hold-out transfer ASR (%). Adversarial patches are crafted using an ensemble of six source models and directly evaluated on a single unseen target model.
Method
MobileNetV2
ShuffleNetV2
ResNet-18
VGG-16
CompNet
CCNet
CO3Net
Patch PGD
62.41
61.76
31.56
50.27
17.19
7.17
32.96
CSPA
73.48
54.62
24.10
62.34
20.88
7.76
22.69
CAAP s
97.73
96.79
86.59
88.50
60.07
28.02
74.21
CAAP c
93.77
86.31
92.83
99.27
69.51
27.78
87.16
TABLE VIII: Cross-dataset transfer ASR (%) from Tongji to IITD.
Fig. 4: ASR of CAAP on three palmprint-specific recognizers before and after adversarial training.
Fig. 5: Identity-level ASR of physical untargeted and targeted attacks by CAAP under real print-and-capture acquisition.
Fig. 6: Effect of cross-shaped patch size. ASR (%) is reported against CCNet, CO3Net, and CompNet as the long-arm length varies from 25 to 45, with the short arm fixed to 25% of the long arm.
Fig. 7: Ablation on patch shape. ASR (%) is reported for four patch geometries against three palmprint-specific recognizers.
Fig. 8: Effect of patch placement position. ASR (%) is reported for attention-guided, center, random, and fixed top-left placement.
Setting
Components
Victim model
ASIT
MS-DIFE
RaS
CCNet
CO3Net
CompNet
Base
63.79
57.59
35.79
ASIT
✓
97.43
97.52
89.52
MS-DIFE
✓
62.24
57.54
36.21
RaS
✓
65.46
57.29
35.94
ASIT+MS-DIFE
✓
✓
97.82
97.47
84.09
TABLE IX: Ablation on component combinations. Base removes ASIT, MS-DIFE, and RaS, whereas All enables all three components.
Fig. 9: Hyper-parameter sensitivity on Tongji. Untargeted ASR (%) is reported for CCNet, CompNet, and CO3Net, together with their mean, under one-at-a-time sweeps of λid , λvis , and λtv . Note: The patch size is set to 30 in this ablation study to make the differences across settings more discernible.