Breaking Tiny Machine Learning: Why Quantized Neural Networks Need Domain-Specific Security Analysis
Abstract
Most TinyML hardware focus on supporting Quantized Neural Networks (QNNs) to meet stringent constraints on power consumption, size, and cost. Despite this, the security aspects of quantization within TinyML hardware remain largely unexplored. Although previous studies indicate that QNNs demonstrate similar or enhanced robustness when compared to full-precision Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) against typical evasion attacks, no attack strategies tailored specifically for TinyML hardware have been proposed yet. This paper addresses the aforementioned shortfall by demonstrating how a two-step attack pipeline can surpass the current state-of-the-art in the QNN context and shows the need for more hardware-aware security research.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning
Advanced Neural Network Applications
Advanced Graph Neural Networks
Publication details
- Journal / source
- IEEE Micro
- Publisher
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 77–87
- Publication date
- 23 February 2026