Large language models (LLMs) are vulnerable to backdoor attacks, where hidden triggers induce malicious outputs. Existing defenses generally fall into inference-time detection or training-time mitigation, but face two key limitations.
arXiv:2607. 19894v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are vulnerable to backdoor attacks, where hidden triggers induce malicious outputs.
By Yuxi Li, Zhibo Zhang, Kailong Wang, Xingshuo Han, Ling Shi, Haoyu Wang
arXiv:2605. 01143v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large Language Model (LLM)-powered agents demonstrate strong capabilities in autonomous task execution, tool use, and multi-step reasoning.
By Sheldon Yu, Yingcheng Sun, Hanqing Guo, Qianqian Tong
AgentSentry is an inference‑time defense for tool‑augmented large language model agents that mitigates indirect prompt injection (IPI) attacks. It uses temporal causal diagnostics by performing counterfactual re‑executions at tool‑return boundaries to detect mediator‑sensitive proposals, purifies implicated content, and resumes execution from a sanitized state. Evaluations on AgentDojo show zero successful attacks (ASR = 0%) and an average Utility Under Attack of 76.10%, outperforming baselines while maintaining low false‑positive rates.
By Tian Zhang, Yiwei Xu, Juan Wang, Keyan Guo, Xiaoyang Xu, Bowen Xiao, Quanlong Guan, Jinlin Fan, Jiawei Liu, Zhiquan Liu, Hongxin Hu
The paper introduces Attnlocate, a runtime framework that localizes behavior‑guiding instructions within the attention matrix of large language model agents. By treating this localization as an object detection task, Attnlocate uses a multi‑head, multi‑layer attention aggregation scheme and a 1‑D U‑Net to identify spans that influence tool‑calling decisions. The system then adjudicates potential malicious invocations based on the authority of the source, achieving high detection metrics across diverse LLM families and demonstrating transferability to unseen models.
By Yichao Gao, Yumo Zhang, Yunhao Yao, Haohua Du, Puhan Luo, Ruiqi Li, Zhiqiang Wang
arXiv:2509. 14335v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Automated malware classifiers achieve strong detection performance, but auditing requires more than flagging a sample: analysts must explain malicious behaviors and justify them with code evidence.
By Xinran Zheng, Xingzhi Qian, Yiling He, Shuo Yang, Lorenzo Cavallaro
arXiv:2610.07334v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Interpretability methods for neural networks are predominantly reactive: they analyse activations produced during specific forward passes, requiring kn...
By Krishna Kabra, Constantin Venhoff, Christian Schroeder de Witt
arXiv:2607. 20216v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Malware analysis demands rapid interpretation of complex detonation reports spanning filesystem, network, and process behaviours.
By Adel ElZemity, Shujun Li, Budi Arief
arXiv:2606. 07963v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Backdoor attacks in large language models (LLMs) are often treated as isolated trigger-response failures, motivating defenses tailored to specific triggers or behaviors.
By Omar Mahmoud, Aly M. Kassem, Thommen George Karimpanal, Buddhika Laknath Semage, Negar Rostamzadeh, Golnoosh Farnadi, Santu Rana
arXiv:2609.36879v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: As LLM-based agents perform increasingly complex tasks, Agent Skills have emerged as a flexible mechanism for extending their capabilities. An Agent...
By Haoran Ou, Gelei Deng, Xuanye Zhang, Wenbo Guo, Tianwei Zhang, Kwok-Yan Lam
arXiv:2606. 27091v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: LLMs fine-tuned for security classification are usually evaluated on held-out examples from the same distribution as their training data.
By Ryan Fetterman
Guardrail models, which screen malicious prompts in LLM services, often use lightweight Transformers with short context windows and bucketed positional encodings. The study identifies a new failure mode called Overflip, where repeating a prompt causes the guardrail’s prediction to flip from malicious to benign as the sequence length increases. Experiments on nine popular guardrails show that 5 models exhibit MAL→BEN flips on 100 prompts, with flip rates ranging from 8% to 92% and first flips occurring between 2.6k and 9.4k tokens, highlighting a gradual attention dispersion distinct from traditional attention‑dilution attacks.
By Xu He, Chih-Hsuan Lin, Hung-Mao Chen, Junjie Xiong, Yan Zhai, Kun Sun