arXiv:2609.10142v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language models remain fragile against malicious fine-tuning, motivating training-time defenses against harmful persona drift. Preventative Steer...
By Jing Guan, Yachao Yang, Zhaoliang Liu, Yuyao Zhang, Fanyu Meng, Junlan Feng
arXiv:2605.14605v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Model providers increasingly release the weights of large language models. Although these models are safety-aligned before release, their saf...
By Itay Zloczower, Eyal Lenga, Gilad Gressel, Yisroel Mirsky
The paper introduces FAB, an attack that uses meta‑learning to embed dormant adversarial behaviors into large language models (LLMs). These behaviors remain inactive until the model is finetuned by downstream users, at which point the model can exhibit unwanted actions such as unsolicited advertising, jailbreakability, or over‑refusal. FAB is shown to be effective across multiple LLMs and resilient to various finetuning settings.
By Thibaud Gloaguen, Mark Vero, Robin Staab, Martin Vechev
arXiv:2608. 05045v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Released aligned large language models remain vulnerable to malicious downstream finetuning.
By Yuxuan Huang, Xingyu Zeng, Tianhang Zheng, Chaochao Lu
The paper examines the vulnerability of open‑weight large language model safeguards that aim to block harmful usage by assuming new harmful behavior arises only through fine‑tuning. It demonstrates that simple, low‑cost attacks—abliteration and prefilling—can significantly increase attack success rates across multiple benchmarks, and proposes an abliteration‑resistant tuning (ART) method that mitigates these attacks. The study shows that safeguarding defenses must be evaluated against a broader range of attack strategies beyond fine‑tuning.
By Kevin Kuo, Virginia Smith, Chhavi Yadav
arXiv:2605.01913v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Fine-tuning safety-aligned language models for downstream tasks often leads to substantial degradation of refusal behavior, making models vul...
By Sadia Asif, Mohammad Mohammadi Amiri
The paper introduces ADVERSA, an automated red‑teaming framework that evaluates large language model safety over multiple turns by tracking continuous compliance trajectories instead of binary jailbreak outcomes. Using a fine‑tuned 70B attacker model and a structured 5‑point rubric, the authors conduct controlled experiments on three frontier victim models, measuring guardrail degradation and judge reliability through a triple‑judge consensus. Results show a 26.7% jailbreak rate with most breaches occurring early, and the study documents inter‑judge agreement, attacker drift, and attacker refusals as key factors affecting safety assessment.
By Harry Owiredu-Ashley
The paper introduces CoER, a framework that defends language‑model agents against adaptive indirect prompt injection (IPI) by employing attacker‑defender co‑evolution and refinement. CoER models IPI as a general‑sum Markov game, uses Co‑PPO to maintain historical opponent populations, and fine‑tunes defenders only on verified safe demonstrations. In experiments across seven domains, CoER cuts attack success from 38.5% to 0.2% while boosting task utility from 63.2% to 76.3%.
By Boyang Zhang, Qingxin Xiao, Lingwei Dang, Qingyao Wu
arXiv:2606. 07696v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Activation steering has become a popular training-free method to control LLM behavior by injecting precomputed direction vectors into the model's residual stream at inference time.
By Kien Le, Thai Le
arXiv:2605. 14746v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: While large language models (LLMs) are trained to align with human values, their generations may still violate safety constraints.
By Bat-Sheva Einbinder, Hen Davidov, Yee Whye Teh, Yarin Gal, Yaniv Romano
arXiv:2610.33583v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Multilingual BabyLM systems usually fix language sampling proportions even though the weakest language can change during training. We present ARMOR-DP,...
By Hanyu Liao, Yijing Chen, Tao Ji
The paper introduces an inference‑time defense for Diffusion Language Models that combines adaptive safety steering with safety‑aware remasking. It uses a gating direction to adjust steering strength during denoising and a lightweight response detector to identify unsafe trajectories early, triggering targeted remasking and regeneration under adaptive steering. Experiments on LLaDA and Dream show improved robustness against jailbreak attacks while maintaining benign generation quality.
By Yejin Lee, Ungsik Kim, Yo-Sub Han