Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 11, 2022
Decision Letter - Sathishkumar V E, Editor

PONE-D-22-00930Adversarial Robustness Assessment Why in evaluation both L0 and L∞ attacks are necessaryPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kotyan,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Sathishkumar V E

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: N/A

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: This paper is generally well written and can be accepted for publication after need the following minor revisions:

1. The authors must carefully check the language and English grammar. There are also some typos.

2. Why the Authors have stated that the effectiveness of the L0 and L∞ attacks?. An additional explanation would be helpful for potential readers.

Reviewer #3: Review Report:

Title: Adversarial Robustness Assessment:

Why in evaluation both L_0 and L_{\\infty} attacks are necessary

The paper is devoted to analysis of evaluation both L_0 and L_{\\infty} attacks are necessary

However, the following points should be further improved:

1. Some sentence throughout the paper are strange which make the paper lack

readability. Author should check and correct it.

2. How to construct the derivation (2), need detailed explanations.

3. The main contributions of the paper should be clearly stated

4. Discuss the technical difficulty in dealing with proposed scheme.

5. One or two remarks should be given.

6. There are some typos and grammatical errors. The authors should check carefully and correct seriously.

7. 9. According to the topic of the paper, the authors should discuss some interesting problem as

future work in conclusion, such as 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3123058; 10.1016/j.jfranklin.2020.01.016; 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3060044.

8. There are too many alignment issues. Authors should correct it.

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Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Revision 1

Reviewer #2: The authors must carefully check the language and English grammar. There are also some typos.

Response:The article is revised and has been corrected for typing and grammatical errors.

Reviewer #2: Why the Authors have stated that the effectiveness of the L0 and L∞ attacks?. An additional explanation would be helpful for potential readers.

Response:Thank you for pointing it out. To improve the clarity on the topic, our abstract is revised to state explicitly that the effectiveness of L0 and L∞ attacks used in the article highlight the fact that neural networks are vulnerable to either one or both types of attacks, even when equipped with adversarial defences. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate both types of attacks.

Reviewer #3: Some sentence throughout the paper are strange which make the paper lack readability. Author should check and correct it. There are some typos and grammatical errors. The authors should check carefully and correct seriously. There are too many alignment issues. Authors should correct it.

Response:The readability of the article is improved with simpler sentence structures and also has been corrected for typing and grammatical errors.

Reviewer #3: How to construct the derivation (2), need detailed explanations.

Response:We appreciate your feedback on pointing this out. To improve the clarity on the understanding of the derivation, further details have been updated in the text. The derivation of (2) follows from the definition of adversarial samples that, adversarial samples have a different classification than the original sample, thus effectively inducing misclassification.

Reviewer #3: The main contributions of the paper should be clearly stated.

Response:In order to highlight and clearly state our contributions in this article according to the feedback, the paragraph title “Contributions” is added to the content where the contributions are discussed.

Reviewer #3: Discuss the technical difficulty in dealing with proposed scheme.

Response:The technical difficulty and limitations of the proposed scheme are now discussed in the revised section “Guaranteeing the Quality of Adversarial Samples”.

Reviewer #3: One or two remarks should be given. According to the topic of the paper, the authors should discuss some interesting problem as future work in conclusion, such as 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3123058; 10.1016/j.jfranklin.2020.01.016; 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3060044.

Response:Our conclusions are revised to provide a few remarks and discuss interesting future research directions which could be pursued.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Rebuttal - Threshold.pdf
Decision Letter - Sathishkumar V E, Editor

Adversarial Robustness Assessment Why in evaluation both L0 and L∞ attacks are necessary

PONE-D-22-00930R1

Dear Dr. Kotyan,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Sathishkumar V E

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Sathishkumar V E, Editor

PONE-D-22-00930R1

Adversarial Robustness Assessment: Why in evaluation both L0 and L attacks are necessary

Dear Dr. Kotyan:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Sathishkumar V E

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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