arXiv Computation and Language

Dataset Protection via Watermarked Canaries in Retrieval-Augmented LLMs

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
arXiv AI
Sep 7

Shadow Queries for Private Retrieval in Vector Databases

The paper introduces SHAQ, a defense called Shadow Query Generation that protects document embeddings in vector databases from embedding inversion attacks. SHAQ replaces direct embeddings with diverse shadow queries generated by a language model, thereby decomposing document semantics and decoupling stored embeddings from the original text. Experiments on various IR datasets show that SHAQ significantly lowers recovery rates, defends more tokens than baseline methods, and even improves retrieval utility.

By Xinguo Feng, Zhongkui Ma, Zihan Wang, Chuan Yan, Guowei Yang, Alsharif Abuadbba, Guangdong Bai
arXiv AI
Aug 20

Redakto - The Incognito Tab for LLMs

Redakto is a new tool designed to anonymize text before it is processed by large language models (LLMs). It offers state‑of‑the‑art redaction of personally identifiable information (PII) and pseudonymization, accessible via a web interface, REST APIs, and model context protocol hooks. The authors evaluate its performance on legal and medical datasets, showing that anonymized texts retain utility comparable to the originals, enabling LLM tasks without significant loss of effectiveness.

By Saurav Kumar Saha, Tom R\"ohr, Felix Bie{\ss}mann
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 4

Rent-a-RAG: Embedding-Space Watermarks for Auditing Third-Party RAG

The paper introduces DirBucket, a provider-side semantic watermarking system designed to audit document reuse in third‑party retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) marketplaces. By embedding watermarks as meaning‑preserving paraphrases biased toward provider‑specific directions, DirBucket enables black‑box detection of unauthorized document reuse while maintaining retrieval quality. Experiments on mixed‑provider benchmarks show DirBucket consistently detects non‑compliance within 23 answers, resists adversarial laundering, and transfers effectively to real‑world corpora.

By Alexandr Goultiaev Tolstokorov, Kyriakos Mouratidis, Javad Dogani, Nikolaos Laoutaris
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Sep 3

Rent-a-RAG: Embedding-Space Watermarks for Auditing Third-Party RAG

Rent‑a‑RAG introduces DirBucket, a provider‑side semantic watermarking system that embeds documents with meaning‑preserving paraphrases biased toward secret directions, allowing black‑box auditing of document reuse in multi‑provider retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG). The method consistently detects non‑compliance on a challenging benchmark, achieving strong target detection with no false positives and surviving adversarial post‑answer laundering. DirBucket’s detection transfers unchanged to real‑world corpora in clinical, cyber‑threat‑intelligence, and legal domains, demonstrating that embedding‑space watermarking can make third‑party RAG document reuse statistically auditable.

arXiv AI
Sep 16

RAG-CT: Mitigating Privacy Risks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems via Scanning Prompt Distribution

RAG-CT is a defense mechanism designed to protect Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems from leaking personally identifiable information (PII). It works by detecting malicious queries through analysis of entropy and margin distributions, applying a score-based detection method. Experiments across four attack strategies and four baseline defenses on two datasets show that RAG-CT significantly reduces PII leakage while outperforming existing defenses, all without altering the underlying LLM or retriever.

By Xingyu Lyu, Jiayimei Wang, Jianfeng He, Ning Wang, Yidan Hu, Yimin Chen