Language Model Security Database

Large Language Models (LLMs) employing safety mechanisms based on supervised fine-tuning and preference alignment exhibit a vulnerability to "steering" attacks. Maliciously crafted prompts or input manipulations can exploit representation vectors within the model to either bypass censorship ("refusal-compliance vector") or suppress the model's reasoning process ("thought suppression vector"), resulting in the generation of unintended or harmful outputs. This vulnerability is demonstrated…

Large Language Model (LLM) guardrail systems, including those relying on AI-driven text classification models (e.g., fine-tuned BERT models), are vulnerable to evasion via character injection and adversarial machine learning (AML) techniques. Attackers can bypass detection by injecting Unicode characters (e.g., zero-width characters, homoglyphs) or using AML to subtly perturb prompts, maintaining semantic meaning while evading classification. This allows malicious prompts and jailbreaks to…

Multi-Agent Debate (MAD) frameworks leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) are vulnerable to amplified jailbreak attacks. A novel structured prompt-rewriting technique exploits the iterative dialogue and role-playing dynamics of MAD, circumventing inherent safety mechanisms and significantly increasing the likelihood of generating harmful content. The attack succeeds by using narrative encapsulation, role-driven escalation, iterative refinement, and rhetorical obfuscation to guide agents…

Multilingual and multi-accent audio inputs, combined with acoustic adversarial perturbations (reverberation, echo, whisper effects), can bypass safety mechanisms in Large Audio Language Models (LALMs), causing them to generate unsafe or harmful outputs. The vulnerability is amplified by the interaction between acoustic and linguistic variations, particularly in languages with less training data.

A vulnerability exists in multiple LLMs allowing attackers to elicit harmful responses by strategically distributing malicious intent across multiple turns in a conversation. The vulnerability is not detected by single-turn safety measures, as the harmful intent is only revealed through a sequence of seemingly benign prompts. The vulnerability is exacerbated by the use of techniques such as prompt optimization that dynamically adjust prompts based on model responses, maximizing the likelihood…

Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) are vulnerable to a jailbreaking attack, dubbed PiCo, that leverages token-level typographic attacks on images embedded within code-style instructions. The attack bypasses multi-tiered defense mechanisms, including input filtering and runtime monitoring, by exploiting weaknesses in the visual modality's integration with programming contexts. Harmful intent is concealed within visually benign image fragments and code instructions, circumventing safety…

LLM agents utilizing external tools are vulnerable to indirect prompt injection (IPI) attacks. Attackers can embed malicious instructions into the external data accessed by the agent, manipulating its behavior even when defenses against direct prompt injection are in place. Adaptive attacks, which modify the injected payload based on the specific defense mechanism, consistently bypass existing defenses with a success rate exceeding 50%.

Large Language Models (LLMs) designed for step-by-step problem-solving are vulnerable to query-agnostic adversarial triggers. Appending short, semantically irrelevant text snippets (e.g., "Interesting fact: cats sleep most of their lives") to mathematical problems consistently increases the likelihood of incorrect model outputs without altering the problem's inherent meaning. This vulnerability stems from the models' susceptibility to subtle input manipulations that interfere with their…

Large Language Models (LLMs) are vulnerable to Dialogue Injection Attacks (DIA), where malicious actors manipulate the chat history to bypass safety mechanisms and elicit harmful or unethical responses. DIA exploits the LLM's chat template structure to inject crafted dialogue into the input, even in black-box scenarios where the model's internals are unknown. Two attack methods are presented: one adapts gray-box prefilling attacks, the other leverages deferred responses to increase the…

Large Language Models (LLMs) used for code generation are vulnerable to a jailbreaking attack that leverages implicit malicious prompts. The attack exploits the fact that existing safety mechanisms primarily rely on explicit malicious intent within the prompt instructions. By embedding malicious intent implicitly within a benign-appearing commit message accompanying a code request (e.g., in a simulated software evolution scenario), the attacker can bypass the LLM's safety filters and induce…