PROTheft: A Projector-Based Model Extraction Attack in the Physical World

PROTheft is a model extraction attack (a method where attackers steal an AI model's functionality by observing its responses to many input queries) that works on real-world vision systems like autonomous vehicles by projecting digital attack samples onto a device's camera. The attack bridges the gap between digital attacks and physical-world scenarios by using a projector to convert digital inputs into physical images, and includes a simulation tool to predict how well attack samples will work when converted from digital to physical to digital formats.