Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Dynamic Learned Indexes

Summary: First systematic study of algorithmic complexity attacks on dynamic learned index ALEX, introducing space and time ACAs that exploit gapped-array layouts, catastrophic-cost mitigation, and model mismatch. Space ACAs use a Multiple-Choice Knapsack-based insertion plan to maximize memory (triggering OOM with only hundreds of adversarial inserts); time ACAs craft pathological insertions that worsen model fit and slow runtime up to 1,641×. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 13753
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2024
Pagerank: 4.4714076e-05
Overall Rank: 8,671 | 39.68%
DOI: 10.14778/3636218.3636232

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 3 of 3 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
9,903	Towards Systematic Index Dynamization	2024	VLDB	4.258022e-05
10,038	Understanding Robustness Issues of Updatable Learned Indexes: [Experiments & Analysis]	2026	SIGMOD	4.1945683e-05
10,087	High Performance or Low Memory? An Updatable Learned Index Framework for Time-Space Tradeoff	2026	SIGMOD	4.1945683e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 22 of 22 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
94	CrowdDB: Answering Queries with Crowdsourcing	2011	SIGMOD	0.00051013264
102	The Case for Learned Index Structures	2018	SIGMOD	0.00049545203
183	Automatic Database Management System Tuning Through Large-scale Machine Learning	2017	SIGMOD	0.00036721403
267	Human-powered Sorts and Joins	2012	VLDB	0.00029690405
801	SageDB: A Learned Database System	2019	CIDR	0.00016505496
826	ALEX: An Updatable Adaptive Learned Index	2020	SIGMOD	0.00016224841
857	The PGM-index: a fully-dynamic compressed learned index with provable worst-case bounds	2020	VLDB	0.00015882892
1,375	FITing-Tree: A Data-aware Index Structure	2019	SIGMOD	0.00012303141
1,460	Benchmarking Learned Indexes	2021	VLDB	0.00011887068
1,478	Learning Multi-dimensional Indexes	2020	SIGMOD	0.00011762542
1,889	Tsunami: A Learned Multi-dimensional Index for Correlated Data and Skewed Workloads	2021	VLDB	0.00010200865
2,552	Updatable Learned Index with Precise Positions	2021	VLDB	8.5530411e-05
2,809	Deco: A System for Declarative Crowdsourcing	2012	VLDB	8.0869896e-05
3,131	FINEdex: A Fine-grained Learned Index Scheme for Scalable and Concurrent Memory Systems	2022	VLDB	7.4985793e-05
4,084	APEX: A High-Performance Learned Index on Persistent Memory	2022	VLDB	6.4622113e-05
4,128	Are Updatable Learned Indexes Ready?	2022	VLDB	6.4292373e-05
5,074	Learned Index: A Comprehensive Experimental Evaluation	2023	VLDB	5.7175726e-05
5,428	The Price of Tailoring the Index to Your Data: Poisoning Attacks on Learned Index Structures	2022	SIGMOD	5.5091613e-05
5,592	PLIN: A Persistent Learned Index for Non-Volatile Memory with High Performance and Instant Recovery	2023	VLDB	5.4210633e-05
5,642	NFL: Robust Learned Index via Distribution Transformation	2022	VLDB	5.3929294e-05
6,492	FILM: a Fully Learned Index for Larger-than-Memory Databases	2023	VLDB	5.042727e-05
8,082	Tastes Great! Less Filling! High Performance and Accurate Training Data Collection for Self-Driving Database Management Systems	2022	SIGMOD	4.5905454e-05

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7,390	Making In-Memory Learned Indexes Efficient on Disk	2024	SIGMOD	4.7431654e-05
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