arXiv AI

DenialRAG: Single-Document RAG Poisoning via Embedded Parametric Denial

arXiv:2608. 02678v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems are vulnerable to corpus poisoning: an attacker who inserts a crafted document into the retrieval corpus can steer the underlying large language model (LLM) toward an attacker-chosen wrong answer.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 30

RAGuard: A Layered Defense Framework for Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems Against Data Poisoning

arXiv:2607. 26339v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems ground large language models (LLMs) in external corpora, but this reliance exposes them to corpus poisoning: maliciously injected passages that manipulate retrieved evidence.

By Pushkal Kumar, Tucker Nielson, Tanish Kolhe, Shubham Zala, Vincent Li
arXiv AI
Aug 28

TriShieldRAG: 3 Rings, One Blind Spot in Layered Defenses for Retrieval-Augmented Generation

TriShieldRAG introduces a three‑layered defense for Retrieval‑Augmented Generation: an Ingest Guard that screens documents, a Retrieval Scorer that re‑ranks based on trust, and a Cross‑LLM Consensus that validates evidence across three models. Against the original PoisonedRAG attack on the 2.68M‑passage Natural Questions corpus, the framework reduces attack success from about 79% to 1%. However, adaptive attacks that only alter document formatting can bypass the Ingest Guard and still achieve high success rates, revealing limits of layered defenses that rely on the same retrieved evidence.

By Susil Kumar Mohanty, Rohit Patel, Kosuru Yuvaraj, Jeenal Chaudhary, Disha Singhania
arXiv AI
Aug 26

RAGSentinel: Certifiable Geometric Consensus for Robust Retrieval-Augmented Generation

RAGSentinel is a training‑free, label‑free defense designed for black‑box retrieval‑augmented generation systems. It employs a surrogate encoder to detect hidden‑state shifts caused by retrieved documents, removes shared topic directions, and filters poisoned documents as geometric outliers from a robust majority consensus. The method is proven to recover a poison‑free majority context under honest‑majority and representation‑separation assumptions, and experiments show it keeps attack success rates low while maintaining accuracy across multiple datasets, LLM families, and adaptive attacks.

By Yueyang Quan, Anjun Gao, Yufei Xia, Minghong Fang, Zhuqing Liu
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

Tracing Target Answers in Poisoned Retrieval Corpora via Token Influence Attribution

The paper introduces TRACE, a lightweight framework for detecting corpus poisoning in Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems. TRACE works by tracing answer-related tokens through token influence attribution, first identifying recurrent high-influence keywords across retrieved documents and then verifying their impact on model predictions. Experiments on three QA benchmarks and six large language models show that TRACE achieves strong detection performance while also revealing attacker-specified target answers.

By Yan-Lun Chen, Pin-Yu Chen, Chia-Mu Yu, Ying-Dar Lin, Yu-Sung Wu, Wei-Bin Lee
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 31

CamoDocs: A Poisoning Attack Against Retrieval-Augmented Language Models Using Camouflaged Documents

arXiv:2608. 28389v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) augments LLMs with external documents, but public or user-editable sources expose RAG systems to data poisoning: attackers can inject malicious documents to steer outputs toward targeted answers.

By Jaewon Jung, Haizhong Zheng, Hongsun Jang, Jaeyong Song, Beidi Chen, Jinho Lee