Catastrophic Learning: A New Attack Vector on Continual Learning Networks

Abstract: Continual Learning (CL) enables deep learning models to iteratively learn from a stream of data without forgetting prior knowledge. Existing adversarial research on CL primarily aims to re-enable catastrophic forgetting, attacking stability and reducing availability. We identify a novel security flaw: data manipulated by an attacker can reduce the learnability of current or upcoming iterations. We term such manipulations learning blockers, as they attack the plasticity of CL algorithms. They are particularly harmful because they are difficult to detect during training of the current iteration, since they can target iterations whose data the model has not yet encountered. When learning blockers additionally induce catastrophic forgetting, the resulting overall degradation is what we call catastrophic learning. We formalize this scenario, define a threat model and propose six attack strategies: Label-Exchange, Tensor-Exchange, Attraction-Coincident, Attraction-Preceding, Repulsion-Coincident, and Repulsion-Preceding. The Attraction variants minimize the loss between the poisoned and the victim iteration label, pulling their representations together in feature space; the Repulsion variants maximize this loss, pushing them apart so stability mechanisms resist the required parameter shift. In the Coincident variants, the poisoned and the victim iteration coincide, using a clean reference iteration only as a label source; in the Preceding variants, the poisoned iteration precedes the victim, leaving it unlearnable due to distorted representations. We evaluate on MNIST and Split-CIFAR10 against three CL strategies - DER, ER-ACE, and iCaRL - across more than 4,480 simulations. Our results demonstrate a strong vulnerability: an adversary can selectively impede plasticity to hinder the acquisition of new knowledge, while promoting loss of prior knowledge, inducing a catastrophic learning scenario.