Composite Backdoor Attacks Against Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Huang, Hai, Zhao, Zhengyu, Backes, Michael, Shen, Yun, Zhang, Yang
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2023
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author Huang, Hai
Zhao, Zhengyu
Backes, Michael
Shen, Yun
Zhang, Yang
author_facet Huang, Hai
Zhao, Zhengyu
Backes, Michael
Shen, Yun
Zhang, Yang
contents Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated superior performance compared to previous methods on various tasks, and often serve as the foundation models for many researches and services. However, the untrustworthy third-party LLMs may covertly introduce vulnerabilities for downstream tasks. In this paper, we explore the vulnerability of LLMs through the lens of backdoor attacks. Different from existing backdoor attacks against LLMs, ours scatters multiple trigger keys in different prompt components. Such a Composite Backdoor Attack (CBA) is shown to be stealthier than implanting the same multiple trigger keys in only a single component. CBA ensures that the backdoor is activated only when all trigger keys appear. Our experiments demonstrate that CBA is effective in both natural language processing (NLP) and multimodal tasks. For instance, with $3\%$ poisoning samples against the LLaMA-7B model on the Emotion dataset, our attack achieves a $100\%$ Attack Success Rate (ASR) with a False Triggered Rate (FTR) below $2.06\%$ and negligible model accuracy degradation. Our work highlights the necessity of increased security research on the trustworthiness of foundation LLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2310_07676
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Composite Backdoor Attacks Against Large Language Models
Huang, Hai
Zhao, Zhengyu
Backes, Michael
Shen, Yun
Zhang, Yang
Cryptography and Security
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated superior performance compared to previous methods on various tasks, and often serve as the foundation models for many researches and services. However, the untrustworthy third-party LLMs may covertly introduce vulnerabilities for downstream tasks. In this paper, we explore the vulnerability of LLMs through the lens of backdoor attacks. Different from existing backdoor attacks against LLMs, ours scatters multiple trigger keys in different prompt components. Such a Composite Backdoor Attack (CBA) is shown to be stealthier than implanting the same multiple trigger keys in only a single component. CBA ensures that the backdoor is activated only when all trigger keys appear. Our experiments demonstrate that CBA is effective in both natural language processing (NLP) and multimodal tasks. For instance, with $3\%$ poisoning samples against the LLaMA-7B model on the Emotion dataset, our attack achieves a $100\%$ Attack Success Rate (ASR) with a False Triggered Rate (FTR) below $2.06\%$ and negligible model accuracy degradation. Our work highlights the necessity of increased security research on the trustworthiness of foundation LLMs.
title Composite Backdoor Attacks Against Large Language Models
topic Cryptography and Security
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.07676