Driving up Inference Energy on SNNs: Per-Sample and Universal Sponge Attacks
Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) communicate through sparse binary spike events rather than dense activations, enabling energy-efficient inference on neuromorphic hardware and motivating their use in always-on, battery-powered edge systems. We show that this same efficiency advantage creates a distinct security risk: sponge attacks can increase inference-time spike activity and synaptic workload, inflating energy consumption while remaining difficult to detect through correctness-based monitoring alone. Prior input-space efficiency attacks on SNNs have focused on per-sample optimization, primarily in rate-coded settings. We extend this threat to native event-based binary inputs and study tw...
| Authors | Spyridon Raptis, Haralampos-G. Stratigopoulos |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CR |
| Published | 30 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 30 July 2026 |
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 17 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.