NaviDet: Efficient Input-level Backdoor Detection on Text-to-Image Synthesis via Neuron Activation Variation

In recent years, text-to-image (T2I) diffusion models have garnered significant attention for their ability to generate high-quality images reflecting text prompts. However, their growing popularity has also led to the emergence of backdoor threats, posing substantial risks. Currently, effective defense strategies against such threats are lacking due to the diversity of backdoor targets in T2I synthesis. In this paper, we propose NaviDet, the first general input-level backdoor detection framework for identifying backdoor inputs across various backdoor targets. Our approach is based on the new observation that trigger tokens tend to induce significant neuron activation variation in the early stage of the diffusion generation process, a phenomenon we term Early-step Activation Variation. Leveraging this insight, NaviDet detects malicious samples by analyzing neuron activation variations caused by input tokens. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our method against various T2I backdoor attacks, surpassing existing baselines with significantly lower computational overhead. Furthermore, we rigorously demonstrate that our method remains effective against potential adaptive attacks.

@article{zhai2025_2503.06453,
  title={ NaviDet: Efficient Input-level Backdoor Detection on Text-to-Image Synthesis via Neuron Activation Variation },
  author={ Shengfang Zhai and Jiajun Li and Yue Liu and Huanran Chen and Zhihua Tian and Wenjie Qu and Qingni Shen and Ruoxi Jia and Yinpeng Dong and Jiaheng Zhang },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.06453},
  year={ 2025 }
}