Defensive Dual Masking for Robust Adversarial Defense

Abstract: The field of textual adversarial defenses has gained considerable attention in recent years due to the increasing vulnerability of NLP models to adversarial attacks, which exploit subtle perturbations in input text to deceive models. This paper introduces the Defensive Dual Masking (DDM) algorithm, a novel approach designed to enhance model robustness against such attacks. DDM utilizes a unique adversarial training strategy where [MASK] tokens are strategically inserted into training samples to prepare the model to handle adversarial perturbations more effectively. During inference, potentially adversarial tokens are dynamically replaced with [MASK] tokens to neutralize potential threats while preserving the core semantics of the input. The theoretical foundation of our approach is explored, demonstrating how the selective masking mechanism strengthens the model's ability to identify and mitigate adversarial manipulations. Our empirical evaluation across a diverse set of benchmark datasets and attack mechanisms consistently shows that DDM outperforms state-of-the-art defense techniques, improving model accuracy and robustness. Moreover, when applied to LLMs, DDM also enhances their resilience to adversarial attacks, providing a scalable defense mechanism for large-scale NLP applications.