DRIFT: Removing Diffusion Watermarks by Deflecting the Generative Trajectory
Introduces DRIFT, a black-box attack removing diffusion watermarks by deflecting generative trajectories, achieving 98-100% success across nine watermarking schemes.
Researchers propose DRIFT, a black-box watermark removal attack combining partial forward diffusion with stochastic reverse resampling to break trajectory-dependent verification. The paper derives information-theoretic and Wasserstein source-dependence bounds and shows the first verifier-rejected rung is least distorted among rejected rungs. Across nine watermarks spanning three paradigms, DRIFT achieves 98-100% attack success with the best image quality among compared attacks, without secret keys, verifier internals, or per-image gradient optimization.