Watertox: The Art of Simplicity in Universal Attacks A Cross-Model Framework for Robust Adversarial Generation

Abstract

Contemporary adversarial attack methods face significant limitations in cross-model transferability and practical applicability. We present Watertox, an elegant adversarial attack framework achieving remarkable effectiveness through architectural diversity and precision-controlled perturbations. Our two-stage Fast Gradient Sign Method combines uniform baseline perturbations (_1 = 0.1) with targeted enhancements (_2 = 0.4). The framework leverages an ensemble of complementary architectures, from VGG to ConvNeXt, synthesizing diverse perspectives through an innovative voting mechanism. Against state-of-the-art architectures, Watertox reduces model accuracy from 70.6% to 16.0%, with zero-shot attacks achieving up to 98.8% accuracy reduction against unseen architectures. These results establish Watertox as a significant advancement in adversarial methodologies, with promising applications in visual security systems and CAPTCHA generation.

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Reproductions