Visible to the public Multi-Armed-Bandit-based Shilling Attack on Collaborative Filtering Recommender Systems

TitleMulti-Armed-Bandit-based Shilling Attack on Collaborative Filtering Recommender Systems
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2020
AuthorsSundar, Agnideven Palanisamy, Li, Feng, Zou, Xukai, Hu, Qin, Gao, Tianchong
Conference Name2020 IEEE 17th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS)
KeywordsBuildings, collaborative filtering, Conferences, human factors, Multi-Armed-Bandits, Profile Injection Attack, pubcrawl, recommender system, recommender systems, reinforcement learning, Resiliency, Scalability, Sensor systems, Shilling Attack, Uncertainty
AbstractCollaborative Filtering (CF) is a popular recommendation system that makes recommendations based on similar users' preferences. Though it is widely used, CF is prone to Shilling/Profile Injection attacks, where fake profiles are injected into the CF system to alter its outcome. Most of the existing shilling attacks do not work on online systems and cannot be efficiently implemented in real-world applications. In this paper, we introduce an efficient Multi-Armed-Bandit-based reinforcement learning method to practically execute online shilling attacks. Our method works by reducing the uncertainty associated with the item selection process and finds the most optimal items to enhance attack reach. Such practical online attacks open new avenues for research in building more robust recommender systems. We treat the recommender system as a black box, making our method effective irrespective of the type of CF used. Finally, we also experimentally test our approach against popular state-of-the-art shilling attacks.
DOI10.1109/MASS50613.2020.00050
Citation Keysundar_multi-armed-bandit-based_2020