{"paper":{"title":"When Stronger Triggers Backfire: A High-Dimensional Theory of Backdoor Attacks","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["math.ST","stat.TH"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Donald Flynn, Hadas Yaron Goldhirsh, Inbar Seroussi, Jonathan P. Keating","submitted_at":"2026-05-21T13:39:06Z","abstract_excerpt":"Backdoor poisoning attacks behave counter-intuitively in high dimensions: stronger training triggers can help the defender. We study regularised generalised linear models on Gaussian-mixture data in the proportional regime ($p/n \\to \\kappa$), varying the training trigger strength $\\alpha$ against a fixed test trigger. Three phenomena emerge: (i) clean test accuracy increases with $\\alpha$; (ii) attack success peaks at a finite $\\alpha$ and then declines; and (iii) the most damaging trigger direction is the minimum eigenvector of the data covariance. We prove all three results in closed form fo"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2605.22481","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2605.22481/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}