Breaking Speaker Recognition with PaddingBack

Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) has gained popularity due to advancements in Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). However, untrusted third-party platforms have raised concerns about AI security, particularly in backdoor attacks. Recent research has shown that speech backdoors can utilize transformations as triggers, similar to image backdoors. However, human ears can easily be aware of these transformations, leading to suspicion. In this paper, we propose PaddingBack, an inaudible backdoor attack that utilizes malicious operations to generate poisoned samples, rendering them indistinguishable from clean ones. Instead of using external perturbations as triggers, we exploit the widely-used speech signal operation, padding, to break speaker recognition systems. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method, achieving a significant attack success rate while retaining benign accuracy. Furthermore, PaddingBack demonstrates the ability to resist defense methods and maintain its stealthiness against human perception.