Spectral Embeddings Leak Graph Topology: Theory, Benchmark, and Adaptive Reconstruction

arXiv cs.LG / 4/24/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper argues that common GNN benchmarks assume a centrally available, clean graph, and instead studies realistic fragmented/noisy/privacy-leaking graph settings.
  • It introduces LoGraB (Local Graph Benchmark), a framework that generates local graph fragments from standard datasets using controls for neighborhood radius (d), spectral quality (k), noise level (σ), and coverage ratio (p), enabling tasks like reconstruction and localized link prediction.
  • For reconstructing noisy spectral fragments, the authors propose AFR (Adaptive Fidelity-driven Reconstruction), which evaluates patch quality using a fidelity metric and then assembles local islands via RANSAC-Procrustes alignment, adaptive stitching, and bundle adjustment.
  • The work provides theoretical results on heat-kernel edge recovery, perturbation stability, and bounded alignment error, and also presents a Spectral Leakage Proposition showing Bayesian recovery is possible when enough eigenvectors are shared under spectral-gap assumptions.
  • Experiments across nine benchmarks show LoGraB can reveal strengths and weaknesses under fragmentation, AFR achieves the best F1 on 7/9 datasets, and under Gaussian differential privacy AFR retains about 75% of undefended F1 at ε=2.

Abstract

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) excel on relational data, but standard benchmarks unrealistically assume the graph is centrally available. In practice, settings such as Federated Graph Learning, distributed systems, and privacy-sensitive applications involve graph data that are localized, fragmented, noisy, and privacy-leaking. We present a unified framework for this setting. We introduce LoGraB (Local Graph Benchmark), which decomposes standard datasets into fragmented benchmarks using three strategies and four controls: neighborhood radius d, spectral quality k, noise level \sigma, and coverage ratio p. LoGraB supports graph reconstruction, localized node classification, and inter-fragment link prediction, with Island Cohesion. We propose AFR (Adaptive Fidelity-driven Reconstruction), a method for noisy spectral fragments. AFR scores patch quality via a fidelity measure combining a gap-to-truncation stability ratio and structural entropy, then assembles fragments using RANSAC-Procrustes alignment, adaptive stitching, and Bundle Adjustment. Rather than forcing a single global graph, AFR recovers large faithful islands. We prove heat-kernel edge recovery under a separation condition, Davis--Kahan perturbation stability, and bounded alignment error. We establish a Spectral Leakage Proposition: under a spectral-gap assumption, polynomial-time Bayesian recovery is feasible once enough eigenvectors are shared, complementing AFR's deterministic guarantees. Experiments on nine benchmarks show that LoGraB reveals model strengths and weaknesses under fragmentation, AFR achieves the best F1 on 7/9 datasets, and under per-embedding (\epsilon,\delta)-Gaussian differential privacy, AFR retains 75% of its undefended F1 at \epsilon=2. Our anonymous code is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/JMLR_submission