arXiv AI

Same Bytes, Different Authority: Reserved-Token Representations in Chat-Template Prompt Injection

arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 16

Nameless Tokenization: A Lossless Tokenizer-Level Defense Against Control-Token Forgery in Open-Weight LLMs

The paper examines how open‑weight language models expose the control tokens used in chat templates, allowing attackers to forge turn boundaries that the model treats as legitimate. An audit of 256 deployed tokenizers shows all are vulnerable, and the commonly recommended flag fails to protect 56.6% of cases. The authors introduce nameless tokenization, which removes surface strings for control identifiers while preserving their internal representation, achieving identical token streams on clean data and significantly improving accuracy on delimiter‑bearing text.

By Kisu Yang, Yoonna Jang, Heuiseok Lim
arXiv AI
Aug 26

Semantic Overlays: Mitigating Prompt Injection with Annotations Beyond Tokens and Steering Vectors

The paper introduces Semantic Overlays, a steering technique that adds non‑textual annotations to a language model’s input by applying learned adapters at specific prefill positions. These overlays create an out‑of‑band channel that encodes span identity and complex semantics, enabling the model to interpret marked text differently—such as rewriting code in a specified language or ignoring executable instructions. Experiments show that Semantic Overlays dramatically reduce prompt‑injection success rates while preserving model utility and readability of marked spans.

By Joshua Penman
arXiv AI
Sep 7

Repeat-After-Me: Black-Box Adaptive Visual Prompt Injection

Repeat-After-Me is a black-box adaptive visual prompt injection technique that can reveal personally identifiable information or trigger malicious tool calls in both open-weight and commercial vision‑language models, achieving attack success rates above 80% on Qwen3.6‑27B and 47% on GPT‑5.5. The method works even when the benign user prompt is unrelated to the injected task and does not explicitly authorize it, and it retains significant effectiveness when transferred across models or optimized on surrogate systems. In a real‑world OpenClaw Discord deployment, a minimally injected image can overwrite TOOLS.md, enabling remote code execution and secret exfiltration.

By Sizhe Chen, Yu-Lin Tsai, Ivan Evtimov, Kamalika Chaudhuri, Raluca Ada Popa, David Wagner, Arman Zharmagambetov
arXiv AI
Jun 2

AgentRedBench: Dynamic Redteaming and Integration-Aware Defense for LLM Agents over SaaS Integrations

arXiv:2606. 02240v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Indirect prompt injection in tool-use agents is a concrete production threat: LLM agents read from integrations (third-party services such as Gmail, Salesforce, or Jira accessed through tool calls) whose response content the user neither writes nor controls.

By Hiskias Dingeto, Will Leeney