VL-Trojan: Multimodal Instruction Backdoor Attacks against Autoregressive Visual Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liang, Jiawei, Liang, Siyuan, Luo, Man, Liu, Aishan, Han, Dongchen, Chang, Ee-Chien, Cao, Xiaochun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Liang, Jiawei
Liang, Siyuan
Luo, Man
Liu, Aishan
Han, Dongchen
Chang, Ee-Chien
Cao, Xiaochun
author_facet Liang, Jiawei
Liang, Siyuan
Luo, Man
Liu, Aishan
Han, Dongchen
Chang, Ee-Chien
Cao, Xiaochun
contents Autoregressive Visual Language Models (VLMs) showcase impressive few-shot learning capabilities in a multimodal context. Recently, multimodal instruction tuning has been proposed to further enhance instruction-following abilities. However, we uncover the potential threat posed by backdoor attacks on autoregressive VLMs during instruction tuning. Adversaries can implant a backdoor by injecting poisoned samples with triggers embedded in instructions or images, enabling malicious manipulation of the victim model's predictions with predefined triggers. Nevertheless, the frozen visual encoder in autoregressive VLMs imposes constraints on the learning of conventional image triggers. Additionally, adversaries may encounter restrictions in accessing the parameters and architectures of the victim model. To address these challenges, we propose a multimodal instruction backdoor attack, namely VL-Trojan. Our approach facilitates image trigger learning through an isolating and clustering strategy and enhance black-box-attack efficacy via an iterative character-level text trigger generation method. Our attack successfully induces target outputs during inference, significantly surpassing baselines (+62.52\%) in ASR. Moreover, it demonstrates robustness across various model scales and few-shot in-context reasoning scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_13851
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle VL-Trojan: Multimodal Instruction Backdoor Attacks against Autoregressive Visual Language Models
Liang, Jiawei
Liang, Siyuan
Luo, Man
Liu, Aishan
Han, Dongchen
Chang, Ee-Chien
Cao, Xiaochun
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Autoregressive Visual Language Models (VLMs) showcase impressive few-shot learning capabilities in a multimodal context. Recently, multimodal instruction tuning has been proposed to further enhance instruction-following abilities. However, we uncover the potential threat posed by backdoor attacks on autoregressive VLMs during instruction tuning. Adversaries can implant a backdoor by injecting poisoned samples with triggers embedded in instructions or images, enabling malicious manipulation of the victim model's predictions with predefined triggers. Nevertheless, the frozen visual encoder in autoregressive VLMs imposes constraints on the learning of conventional image triggers. Additionally, adversaries may encounter restrictions in accessing the parameters and architectures of the victim model. To address these challenges, we propose a multimodal instruction backdoor attack, namely VL-Trojan. Our approach facilitates image trigger learning through an isolating and clustering strategy and enhance black-box-attack efficacy via an iterative character-level text trigger generation method. Our attack successfully induces target outputs during inference, significantly surpassing baselines (+62.52\%) in ASR. Moreover, it demonstrates robustness across various model scales and few-shot in-context reasoning scenarios.
title VL-Trojan: Multimodal Instruction Backdoor Attacks against Autoregressive Visual Language Models
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.13851