# Disruptive Attacks on Face Swapping via Low-Frequency Perceptual Perturbations

## TL;DR

This paper introduces an active defense method using low-frequency perceptual perturbations to disrupt deepfake face swapping, effectively reducing manipulation success while maintaining visual plausibility.

## Contribution

It presents a novel approach that directly targets the generative process of deepfake techniques using frequency and spatial domain features, enhancing defense effectiveness.

## Key findings

- Significant reduction in face-swapping success rates.
- Improved defense effectiveness compared to existing methods.
- Maintains high visual quality of perturbed images.

## Abstract

Deepfake technology, driven by Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), poses significant risks to privacy and societal security. Existing detection methods are predominantly passive, focusing on post-event analysis without preventing attacks. To address this, we propose an active defense method based on low-frequency perceptual perturbations to disrupt face swapping manipulation, reducing the performance and naturalness of generated content. Unlike prior approaches that used low-frequency perturbations to impact classification accuracy,our method directly targets the generative process of deepfake techniques. We combine frequency and spatial domain features to strengthen defenses. By introducing artifacts through low-frequency perturbations while preserving high-frequency details, we ensure the output remains visually plausible. Additionally, we design a complete architecture featuring an encoder, a perturbation generator, and a decoder, leveraging discrete wavelet transform (DWT) to extract low-frequency components and generate perturbations that disrupt facial manipulation models. Experiments on CelebA-HQ and LFW demonstrate significant reductions in face-swapping effectiveness, improved defense success rates, and preservation of visual quality.