arXiv Machine Learning By Shiliang Xiao

TACS: Trajectory-Aware Candidate Selection for LLM Jailbreak Suffix Optimization

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The paper introduces TACS, a trajectory‑aware candidate selection framework designed to improve jailbreak suffix optimization for large language models. Traditional gradient‑based methods choose candidates based solely on the lowest current loss, which the authors argue is myopic and can lead to reward hacking. TACS augments per‑step evaluation with a trajectory‑aware proxy, reference‑policy regularization, and a chi‑squared correction to encourage selections that remain effective beyond the immediate step. Experiments on HarmBench show that TACS consistently outperforms strong baselines, achieving higher attack success rates and more stable optimization behavior.

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