arXiv:2606. 19535v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in sensitive settings such as software engineering, where their outputs directly shape downstream artifacts.
By Nils Loose, Jonas Sander, Felix M\"achtle, Thomas Eisenbarth
arXiv:2606. 14210v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in privacy-sensitive domains, where users must balance the risk of data exposure through external APIs against the high computational cost of local deployment.
By Zixuan Gu, Xiaojun Ye, Yang Liu
arXiv:2606. 05958v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Activation steering has become a popular way to control Large Language Model (LLM) behavior without fine-tuning.
By Abzal Aidakhmetov, Donato Crisostomi, Tommaso Mencattini, Adrian Robert Minut, Iacopo Masi, Emanuele Rodol\`a
The paper investigates how inference optimization for large language models can introduce numerical inconsistencies that trigger hidden backdoors. It introduces two types of optimization‑triggered backdoors: the Input‑Specific Optimization Backdoor (ISOB) and the Universal Optimization Backdoor (UOB), the latter enabling a model to remain benign under normal execution but activate a backdoor when optimization is applied. Experiments on seven open‑source LLMs, across multiple tasks and optimization backends, show UOB can achieve up to 100% attack success while maintaining clean accuracy, and the authors propose three defenses that reduce the attack success rate to 0.02.
By Yifei Wang, Yida Yang, Tianlin Li, Xiaohan Zhang, Xiaoyu Zhang, Li Pan
arXiv:2608. 09867v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Leading large language model providers now conceal their models' step-by-step reasoning, or chain-of-thought, to protect intellectual property and limit information leakage.
By Alexander Panfilov, David Schmotz, Ilia Shumailov, Luca Beurer-Kellner, Joachim Schaeffer, Ameya Prabhu, Jonas Geiping, Maksym Andriushchenko
SpecGuard is an inference‑time backdoor detector that leverages speculative decoding—using a small draft model to propose tokens and a target model to verify them—without adding extra model computation. By monitoring the draft‑token acceptance rate, SpecGuard detects when a target model shifts toward attacker‑controlled behavior while the draft model does not, signaling a backdoor trigger. The method reliably identifies a range of backdoor types, including stealthy attacks that bypass input‑level filters, across multiple model families.
By Rui Wen, Ahmed Salem, Andrew Paverd, Mark Russinovich, Zheng Li