Adversarial Attacks and Defense in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-Based Traffic Signal Controllers

Security attacks on intelligent transportation systems (ITS) may result in life-threatening situations. Combining deep neural networks with reinforcement learning (RL) models called DRL shows promising results when applied to urban Traffic Signal Control (TSC) for adaptive adjustment of traffic ligh...

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Main Authors: Ammar Haydari, Michael Zhang, Chen-Nee Chuah
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2021-01-01
Series:IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9566311/
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author Ammar Haydari
Michael Zhang
Chen-Nee Chuah
author_facet Ammar Haydari
Michael Zhang
Chen-Nee Chuah
author_sort Ammar Haydari
collection DOAJ
description Security attacks on intelligent transportation systems (ITS) may result in life-threatening situations. Combining deep neural networks with reinforcement learning (RL) models called DRL shows promising results when applied to urban Traffic Signal Control (TSC) for adaptive adjustment of traffic light schedules. In this paper, first, we explore the security vulnerabilities of DRL-based TSCs in the presence of adversarial attacks. We investigate the impact of the two distinct threat models with two state-of-the-art adversarial attacks using white-box and black-box settings. The attacks are simulated on different DRL-based TSC algorithms in a single intersection and multiple intersections. The results show that the performance of the DRL learning agent decreases in both adversarial attack models with white-box and black-box settings resulting in higher levels of traffic congestion. After analysing the adversarial attack models, we explored several sequential anomaly detection models. While sequential anomaly detection models minimizes the detection delays, it also achieves lower false alarm rates due to cumulative anomaly inspection. We also proposed an ensemble model that works with all the attack models without any model assumption. The results of anomaly detectors indicates that low-cost ensemble model achieves the best anomaly detection performance in all attack models and DRL settings.
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spelling doaj.art-8d3faf61233841d5a2a4b75167c8d06b2022-12-21T21:24:26ZengIEEEIEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems2687-78132021-01-01240241610.1109/OJITS.2021.31189729566311Adversarial Attacks and Defense in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-Based Traffic Signal ControllersAmmar Haydari0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1986-5656Michael Zhang1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4647-3888Chen-Nee Chuah2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2772-387XDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA, USADepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA, USADepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA, USASecurity attacks on intelligent transportation systems (ITS) may result in life-threatening situations. Combining deep neural networks with reinforcement learning (RL) models called DRL shows promising results when applied to urban Traffic Signal Control (TSC) for adaptive adjustment of traffic light schedules. In this paper, first, we explore the security vulnerabilities of DRL-based TSCs in the presence of adversarial attacks. We investigate the impact of the two distinct threat models with two state-of-the-art adversarial attacks using white-box and black-box settings. The attacks are simulated on different DRL-based TSC algorithms in a single intersection and multiple intersections. The results show that the performance of the DRL learning agent decreases in both adversarial attack models with white-box and black-box settings resulting in higher levels of traffic congestion. After analysing the adversarial attack models, we explored several sequential anomaly detection models. While sequential anomaly detection models minimizes the detection delays, it also achieves lower false alarm rates due to cumulative anomaly inspection. We also proposed an ensemble model that works with all the attack models without any model assumption. The results of anomaly detectors indicates that low-cost ensemble model achieves the best anomaly detection performance in all attack models and DRL settings.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9566311/Deep reinforcement learningstatistical anomaly detectiontraffic signal controladversarial attacksecurity
spellingShingle Ammar Haydari
Michael Zhang
Chen-Nee Chuah
Adversarial Attacks and Defense in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-Based Traffic Signal Controllers
IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems
Deep reinforcement learning
statistical anomaly detection
traffic signal control
adversarial attack
security
title Adversarial Attacks and Defense in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-Based Traffic Signal Controllers
title_full Adversarial Attacks and Defense in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-Based Traffic Signal Controllers
title_fullStr Adversarial Attacks and Defense in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-Based Traffic Signal Controllers
title_full_unstemmed Adversarial Attacks and Defense in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-Based Traffic Signal Controllers
title_short Adversarial Attacks and Defense in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-Based Traffic Signal Controllers
title_sort adversarial attacks and defense in deep reinforcement learning drl based traffic signal controllers
topic Deep reinforcement learning
statistical anomaly detection
traffic signal control
adversarial attack
security
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9566311/
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AT michaelzhang adversarialattacksanddefenseindeepreinforcementlearningdrlbasedtrafficsignalcontrollers
AT chenneechuah adversarialattacksanddefenseindeepreinforcementlearningdrlbasedtrafficsignalcontrollers