Language Model Security Database

LLaVA-v1.5-7B, when deployed as a vision-language autonomous agent, is highly vulnerable to adversarial image perturbations. An attacker can inject imperceptibly modified images into a web environment (such as an e-commerce storefront). When the VLM agent captures a screenshot containing the perturbed image, the visual noise forces the model to misclassify the scene and output incorrect, structured JSON actions. This allows an attacker to hijack the agent's task execution, bypassing the user's…

A vulnerability in Vision-Language Models (VLMs) relying on shared visual-textual representation spaces allows attackers to induce transferable cross-task semantic failures using an X-shaped Sparse Pixel Attack (XSPA). Attackers craft imperceptible adversarial perturbations restricted to a fixed geometric prior—two intersecting diagonal lines comprising approximately 1.76% of the image pixels. By jointly optimizing a classification objective with cross-task semantic guidance (target-semantic…

Agentic LLMs integrated with external data services (e.g., Model Context Protocol, MCP) are vulnerable to Adaptive Indirect Prompt Injection (IPI) attacks. When an agent queries external servers, attackers can inject malicious payloads into the retrieved content to hijack the agent's reasoning process and force the execution of high-authority tools. Unlike traditional static prompt injections, this vulnerability dynamically exploits the agent's internal logic audit. By using Markovian…

Large Language Model (LLM) based web agents (such as those built using the BrowserUse scaffold) are vulnerable to Indirect Prompt Injection (IPI) attacks when autonomously navigating and processing untrusted web content. Unlike standard Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), this vulnerability occurs when the LLM orchestrator consumes the DOM or visual screenshots of a webpage containing concealed or contextually disguised adversarial instructions. The LLM interprets these embedded text strings as…

Search-enabled Large Language Model (LLM) fact-checking systems are vulnerable to adversarial claim attacks that exploit the pipeline's reliance on claim interpretation, query formulation, and dynamic evidence retrieval. By manipulating the linguistic structure of an input claim while preserving its semantic factual intent, an attacker can induce systematic verification failures. This vulnerability stems from three specific attack surfaces: 1. Search Engine Misguidance: Altering lexical…

Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) optimized via Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) are vulnerable to context pollution in their reasoning traces. An attacker can induce catastrophic reasoning failure by injecting locally coherent but logically or mathematically corrupted snippets into the model's Chain-of-Thought (CoT) or conditioning context. Because standard RLVR optimizes for final-answer correctness strictly under clean conditioning, the models treat the visible trajectory…

Activation steering mechanisms employed for inference-time control of Large Language Models (LLMs) contain a vulnerability termed "Steering Externalities." When steering vectors are derived from benign datasets to enforce utility objectives—specifically "compliance" (reducing refusals for benign queries) or "instruction adherence" (e.g., enforcing JSON output formats)—and injected into the model's residual stream, they unintentionally erode safety alignment. The vulnerability arises because…

Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit a vulnerability termed "chunky post-training," where the model learns spurious correlations between incidental prompt features (e.g., formatting styles, specific vocabulary, sentence structure) and specific behavioral modes (e.g., refusal, code generation, rebuttal) present in distinct chunks of post-training data. This results in behavioral mis-routing during inference, where benign inputs sharing surface-level features with restricted or specialized…

Large Language Models (LLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems deployed in clinical workflows are vulnerable to direct and indirect (RAG-mediated) medical prompt injection attacks. Attackers can embed malicious instructions within user queries or external retrieved documents (such as poisoned clinical guidelines or PDFs). By exploiting "authority framing" (e.g., formatting the payload as a clinical guideline update or an editor's note), the injections successfully bypass generic…

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems are vulnerable to a robust corpus poisoning attack known as "Confundo." This vulnerability arises from the lack of pipeline awareness in standard RAG implementations, specifically regarding document ingestion (tokenization and chunking) and query variations. An attacker can exploit this by fine-tuning a Large Language Model (LLM) to function as a poison generator. Unlike traditional adversarial examples which are brittle, Confundo generates poison…