arXiv Computation and Language

API-TAIL: Detecting Model Substitution in LLM APIs through Temperature-Aligned Likelihood Tails

The paper introduces API-TAIL, a method for detecting partial substitution of large language model APIs. It aligns batch-level temperature effects to standardize surprisal scores, then flags anomalous tail responses that persist under the claimed model. Experiments on commercial APIs show API-TAIL controls false alarms while detecting low-rate substitution more effectively than existing audits.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 14

One Token Is Enough: Fingerprinting and Verifying Large Language Models from Single-Token Output Distributions

arXiv:2607. 10252v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly consumed through opaque serving chains - API aggregators, resellers, and inference providers - in which the client has no technical means to confirm that the model answering is the model advertised, and recent audits show that a substantial fraction of commercial endpoints deviate from the vendor's reference weights.

By Tomas Bruckner
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 28

An Embarrassingly Simple Detector for Model Extraction Attacks in Large Language Model API Traffic

The paper presents a simple detector for model extraction attacks on large language model APIs. It frames detection as a benign‑calibrated traffic‑window distribution test, embedding queries into a semantic space and using maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) to compare against historical benign traffic. Evaluated on fourteen attacker‑normal query pairs across four extraction scenarios, MMD achieves near‑perfect true‑positive rates while maintaining a 0.3% false‑positive rate, outperforming several existing baselines.

By Shuze Liu, Qianwen Guo, Yushun Dong
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 1

Token Counts Are Not Model Lineage: A Frozen-Threshold Holdout Study of Black-Box LLM API Fingerprinting

The study evaluates whether prompt‑token counts can reliably identify the lineage of large language models served via APIs. Using a frozen‑threshold approach on 24 labeled endpoint pairs, the authors find that token‑count consistency perfectly separates development pairs but only half of the holdout pairs meet the strict repeatability criteria, yielding moderate accuracy and perfect specificity. The results confirm token‑count consistency as a fingerprint of shared tokenization stacks but reject it as a standalone test for model‑family attribution.

By Bo Chen
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 7

Single-Query Black-Box Calibration Auditing via Logit Bias

The paper introduces a method for auditing the calibration of large language models (LLMs) that only exposes a logit_bias parameter. By mathematically manipulating this parameter, the authors can evaluate exact probability thresholds with a single query per sample, enabling a provably consistent estimator of True Calibration Error for binary tasks. This approach offers an efficient framework for auditing black‑box foundation models despite limited access to continuous output probabilities.

By Roman Plaud, Antoine Saillenfest, Matthieu Labeau, Thomas Bonald, Willem Waegeman
arXiv Statistics ML
4d ago

Is Your LLM Relay Serving What It Claims? A low-cost and high-power test for LLM Relay Auditing

The paper introduces Distributional Fingerprint Auditing (DFA), a statistical method for auditing large language model (LLM) relay services. DFA uses only textual responses from suspect and trusted endpoints, repeatedly querying simple finite-choice probes to build categorical response distributions that serve as fingerprints. By comparing these fingerprints probe‑by‑probe and aggregating evidence with the Cauchy combination test, DFA produces an approximate endpoint‑level p‑value for audit decisions at a chosen significance level, and further supports model attribution and substitution ratio estimation through a likelihood‑based framework.

By Fangran Miao, Shengjie Niu, Jian Huang, Ting Li