Spatially Adaptive and Distillation-Enhanced Mini-Patch Attacks for Remote Sensing Image Object Detection

Despite the remarkable success of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) in Remote Sensing Image (RSI) object detection, they remain vulnerable to adversarial attacks. Numerous adversarial attack methods have been proposed for RSI; however, adding a single large-scale adversarial patch to certain high-value targets, which are typically large in physical scale and irregular in shape, is both costly and inflexible. To address this issue, we propose a strategy of using multiple compact patches. This approach introduces two fundamental challenges: (1) how to optimize patch placement for a synergistic attack effect, and (2) how to retain strong adversarial potency within size-constrained mini-patches. To overcome these challenges, we introduce the Spatially Adaptive and Distillation-Enhanced Mini-Patch Attack (SDMPA) framework, which consists of two key modules: (1) an Adaptive Sensitivity-Aware Positioning (ASAP) module, which resolves the placement challenge by fusing the model’s attention maps from both an explainable and an adversarial perspective to identify optimal patch locations, and (2) a Distillation-based Mini-Patch Generation (DMPG) module, which tackles the potency challenge by leveraging knowledge distillation to transfer adversarial information from large teacher patches to small student patches. Extensive experiments on the RSOD and MAR20 datasets demonstrate that SDMPA significantly outperforms existing patch-based attack methods. For example, against YOLOv5n on the RSOD dataset, SDMPA achieves an Attack Success Rate (ASR) of 88.3% using only three small patches, surpassing other patch attack methods.