FedHAN: A Cache-Based Semi-Asynchronous Federated Learning Framework Defending Against Poisoning Attacks in Heterogeneous Clients

Abstract

Federated learning is vulnerable to model poisoning attacks in which malicious participants compromise the global model by altering the model updates. Current defense strategies are divided into three types: aggregation-based methods, validation dataset-based methods, and update distance-based methods. However, these techniques often neglect the challenges posed by device heterogeneity and asynchronous communication. Even upon identifying malicious clients, the global model may already be significantly damaged, requiring effective recovery strategies to reduce the attacker's impact. Current recovery methods, which are based on historical update records, are limited in environments with device heterogeneity and asynchronous communication. To address these problems, we introduce FedHAN, a reliable federated learning algorithm designed for asynchronous communication and device heterogeneity. FedHAN customizes sparse models, uses historical client updates to impute missing parameters in sparse updates, dynamically assigns adaptive weights, and combines update deviation detection with update prediction-based model recovery. Theoretical analysis indicates that FedHAN achieves favorable convergence despite unbounded staleness and effectively discriminates between benign and malicious clients. Experiments reveal that FedHAN, compared to leading methods, increases the accuracy of the model by 7.86%, improves the detection accuracy of poisoning attacks by 12%, and enhances the recovery accuracy by 7.26%. As evidenced by these results, FedHAN exhibits enhanced reliability and robustness in intricate and dynamic federated learning scenarios.