arXiv AI By Jianwei Li, Min-Seon Kim, Jung-Eun Kim

Backdoor Containment via Expert Quarantine and Shutdown in LLMs

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The paper introduces Quarantined Expert Shutdown (QES), a new backdoor containment strategy for large language models. QES allows backdoor learning to occur during training but routes it into a designated, quarantined expert that can be disabled at deployment. The method achieves significant reductions in attack success rates while largely preserving model utility.

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arXiv:2607. 26849v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As large language models (LLMs) are deployed in high-stakes domains, adversaries may poison training data to implant backdoors: hidden triggers that covertly manipulate model behavior at inference time.

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ToxScreen: Detecting Whether an LLM Has Been Poisoned

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