Adversarial Attacks against Closed-Source MLLMs via Feature Optimal Alignment

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Jia, Xiaojun, Gao, Sensen, Qin, Simeng, Pang, Tianyu, Du, Chao, Huang, Yihao, Li, Xinfeng, Li, Yiming, Li, Bo, Liu, Yang
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Jia, Xiaojun
Gao, Sensen
Qin, Simeng
Pang, Tianyu
Du, Chao
Huang, Yihao
Li, Xinfeng
Li, Yiming
Li, Bo
Liu, Yang
author_facet Jia, Xiaojun
Gao, Sensen
Qin, Simeng
Pang, Tianyu
Du, Chao
Huang, Yihao
Li, Xinfeng
Li, Yiming
Li, Bo
Liu, Yang
contents Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) remain vulnerable to transferable adversarial examples. While existing methods typically achieve targeted attacks by aligning global features-such as CLIP's [CLS] token-between adversarial and target samples, they often overlook the rich local information encoded in patch tokens. This leads to suboptimal alignment and limited transferability, particularly for closed-source models. To address this limitation, we propose a targeted transferable adversarial attack method based on feature optimal alignment, called FOA-Attack, to improve adversarial transfer capability. Specifically, at the global level, we introduce a global feature loss based on cosine similarity to align the coarse-grained features of adversarial samples with those of target samples. At the local level, given the rich local representations within Transformers, we leverage clustering techniques to extract compact local patterns to alleviate redundant local features. We then formulate local feature alignment between adversarial and target samples as an optimal transport (OT) problem and propose a local clustering optimal transport loss to refine fine-grained feature alignment. Additionally, we propose a dynamic ensemble model weighting strategy to adaptively balance the influence of multiple models during adversarial example generation, thereby further improving transferability. Extensive experiments across various models demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method, outperforming state-of-the-art methods, especially in transferring to closed-source MLLMs. The code is released at https://github.com/jiaxiaojunQAQ/FOA-Attack.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_21494
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Adversarial Attacks against Closed-Source MLLMs via Feature Optimal Alignment
Jia, Xiaojun
Gao, Sensen
Qin, Simeng
Pang, Tianyu
Du, Chao
Huang, Yihao
Li, Xinfeng
Li, Yiming
Li, Bo
Liu, Yang
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) remain vulnerable to transferable adversarial examples. While existing methods typically achieve targeted attacks by aligning global features-such as CLIP's [CLS] token-between adversarial and target samples, they often overlook the rich local information encoded in patch tokens. This leads to suboptimal alignment and limited transferability, particularly for closed-source models. To address this limitation, we propose a targeted transferable adversarial attack method based on feature optimal alignment, called FOA-Attack, to improve adversarial transfer capability. Specifically, at the global level, we introduce a global feature loss based on cosine similarity to align the coarse-grained features of adversarial samples with those of target samples. At the local level, given the rich local representations within Transformers, we leverage clustering techniques to extract compact local patterns to alleviate redundant local features. We then formulate local feature alignment between adversarial and target samples as an optimal transport (OT) problem and propose a local clustering optimal transport loss to refine fine-grained feature alignment. Additionally, we propose a dynamic ensemble model weighting strategy to adaptively balance the influence of multiple models during adversarial example generation, thereby further improving transferability. Extensive experiments across various models demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method, outperforming state-of-the-art methods, especially in transferring to closed-source MLLMs. The code is released at https://github.com/jiaxiaojunQAQ/FOA-Attack.
title Adversarial Attacks against Closed-Source MLLMs via Feature Optimal Alignment
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21494