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While machine learning (ML) models are being increasingly trusted to make decisions in different and varying areas, the safety of systems using such models has become an increasing concern. In particular, ML models are often trained on data…

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in settings where inducing a bias toward a certain topic can have significant consequences, and backdoor attacks can be used to produce such models. Prior work on backdoor attacks has…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Anudeep Das , Prach Chantasantitam , Gurjot Singh , Lipeng He , Mariia Ponomarenko , Florian Kerschbaum

The pre-training of large language models (LLMs) relies on massive text datasets sourced from diverse and difficult-to-curate origins. Although membership inference attacks and hidden canaries have been explored to trace data usage, such…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-06-19 Wassim Bouaziz , Mathurin Videau , Nicolas Usunier , El-Mahdi El-Mhamdi

Large Language Models (LLMs) can be backdoored to exhibit malicious behavior under specific deployment conditions while appearing safe during training a phenomenon known as "sleeper agents." Recent work by Hubinger et al. demonstrated that…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-21 Shahin Zanbaghi , Ryan Rostampour , Farhan Abid , Salim Al Jarmakani

Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have achieved remarkable success in cross-modal understanding and generation, yet their deployment is threatened by critical safety vulnerabilities. While prior works have demonstrated the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Kun Wang , Cheng Qian , Miao Yu , Lilan Peng , Liang Lin , Jiaming Zhang , Tianyu Zhang , Yu Cheng , Yang Wang

Recent studies have revealed a security threat to natural language processing (NLP) models, called the Backdoor Attack. Victim models can maintain competitive performance on clean samples while behaving abnormally on samples with a specific…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2021-03-30 Wenkai Yang , Lei Li , Zhiyuan Zhang , Xuancheng Ren , Xu Sun , Bin He

The growing dependence on machine learning in real-world applications emphasizes the importance of understanding and ensuring its safety. Backdoor attacks pose a significant security risk due to their stealthy nature and potentially serious…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-10-19 Ganghua Wang , Xun Xian , Jayanth Srinivasa , Ashish Kundu , Xuan Bi , Mingyi Hong , Jie Ding

Recent studies have widely investigated backdoor attacks on Large Language Models (LLMs) by inserting harmful question-answer (QA) pairs into their training data. However, we revisit existing attacks and identify two critical limitations:…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Jiawei Kong , Hao Fang , Xiaochen Yang , Kuofeng Gao , Bin Chen , Shu-Tao Xia , Ke Xu , Han Qiu

Backdoor attacks compromise model reliability by using triggers to manipulate outputs. Trigger inversion can accurately locate these triggers via a generator and is therefore critical for backdoor defense. However, the discrete nature of…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-03-18 Ruyi Zhang , Heng Gao , Songlei Jian , Yusong Tan , Haifang Zhou

While effective backdoor detection and inversion schemes have been developed for AIs used e.g. for images, there are challenges in "porting" these methods to LLMs. First, the LLM input space is discrete, which precludes gradient-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Zhengxing Li , Guangmingmei Yang , Jayaram Raghuram , David J. Miller , George Kesidis

Backdoor attacks, in which a model behaves maliciously when given an attacker-specified trigger, pose a major security risk for practitioners who depend on publicly released language models. As a countermeasure, backdoor detection methods…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Jun Yan , Wenjie Jacky Mo , Xiang Ren , Robin Jia

It has been proved that deep neural networks are facing a new threat called backdoor attacks, where the adversary can inject backdoors into the neural network model through poisoning the training dataset. When the input containing some…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-03-16 Chuanshuai Chen , Jiazhu Dai

This paper investigates the threat of backdoors in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) agent policies and proposes a novel method for their detection at runtime. Our study focuses on elusive in-distribution backdoor triggers. Such triggers…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-23 Sanyam Vyas , Chris Hicks , Vasilios Mavroudis

Backdoor attacks pose a serious security threat for training neural networks as they surreptitiously introduce hidden functionalities into a model. Such backdoors remain silent during inference on clean inputs, evading detection due to…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-12-15 Lukas Struppek , Martin B. Hentschel , Clifton Poth , Dominik Hintersdorf , Kristian Kersting

Backdoor vulnerabilities widely exist in the fine-tuning of large language models(LLMs). Most backdoor poisoning methods operate mainly at the token level and lack deeper semantic manipulation, which limits stealthiness. In addition, Prior…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Ziyu Liu , Tao Li , Tianjie Ni , Xiaolong Lan , Wengang Ma , Tao Yang , Guohua Wang , Junjiang He

Deep neural networks (DNNs) are vulnerable to "backdoor" poisoning attacks, in which an adversary implants a secret trigger into an otherwise normally functioning model. Detection of backdoors in trained models without access to the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-19 Todd Huster , Emmanuel Ekwedike

Driven by the rapid development of Large Language Models (LLMs), LLM-based agents have been developed to handle various real-world applications, including finance, healthcare, and shopping, etc. It is crucial to ensure the reliability and…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-10-30 Wenkai Yang , Xiaohan Bi , Yankai Lin , Sishuo Chen , Jie Zhou , Xu Sun

Backdoor attacks pose significant security risks for Large Language Models (LLMs), yet the internal mechanisms by which triggers operate remain poorly understood. We present the first mechanistic analysis of language-switching backdoors,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-16 Théo Lasnier , Wissam Antoun , Francis Kulumba , Djamé Seddah

Backdoor attacks pose a serious threat to the security of large language models (LLMs), causing them to exhibit anomalous behavior under specific trigger conditions. The design of backdoor triggers has evolved from fixed triggers to dynamic…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-04-15 Haotian Jin , Yang Li , Haihui Fan , Lin Shen , Xiangfang Li , Bo Li

Recent researches have shown that Large Language Models (LLMs) are susceptible to a security threat known as Backdoor Attack. The backdoored model will behave well in normal cases but exhibit malicious behaviours on inputs inserted with a…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-04-04 Yunzhuo Hao , Wenkai Yang , Yankai Lin