Unveiling the Vulnerability of Graph-LLMs: An Interpretable Multi-Dimensional Adversarial Attack on TAGs

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Fan, Bowen, Guo, Zhilin, Li, Xunkai, Zhou, Yihan, Zhou, Bing, Li, Zhenjun, Li, Rong-Hua, Wang, Guoren
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Fan, Bowen
Guo, Zhilin
Li, Xunkai
Zhou, Yihan
Zhou, Bing
Li, Zhenjun
Li, Rong-Hua
Wang, Guoren
author_facet Fan, Bowen
Guo, Zhilin
Li, Xunkai
Zhou, Yihan
Zhou, Bing
Li, Zhenjun
Li, Rong-Hua
Wang, Guoren
contents Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have become a pivotal framework for modeling graph-structured data, enabling a wide range of applications from social network analysis to molecular chemistry. By integrating large language models (LLMs), text-attributed graphs (TAGs) enhance node representations with rich textual semantics, significantly boosting the expressive power of graph-based learning. However, this sophisticated synergy introduces critical vulnerabilities, as Graph-LLMs are susceptible to adversarial attacks on both their structural topology and textual attributes. Although specialized attack methods have been designed for each of these aspects, no work has yet unified them into a comprehensive approach. In this work, we propose the Interpretable Multi-Dimensional Graph Attack (IMDGA), a novel human-centric adversarial attack framework designed to orchestrate multi-level perturbations across both graph structure and textual features. IMDGA utilizes three tightly integrated modules to craft attacks that balance interpretability and impact, enabling a deeper understanding of Graph-LLM vulnerabilities. Through rigorous theoretical analysis and comprehensive empirical evaluations on diverse datasets and architectures, IMDGA demonstrates superior interpretability, attack effectiveness, stealthiness, and robustness compared to existing methods. By exposing critical weaknesses in TAG representation learning, this work uncovers a previously underexplored semantic dimension of vulnerability in Graph-LLMs, offering valuable insights for improving their resilience. Our code and resources are publicly available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/IMDGA-7289.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_12233
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Unveiling the Vulnerability of Graph-LLMs: An Interpretable Multi-Dimensional Adversarial Attack on TAGs
Fan, Bowen
Guo, Zhilin
Li, Xunkai
Zhou, Yihan
Zhou, Bing
Li, Zhenjun
Li, Rong-Hua
Wang, Guoren
Machine Learning
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have become a pivotal framework for modeling graph-structured data, enabling a wide range of applications from social network analysis to molecular chemistry. By integrating large language models (LLMs), text-attributed graphs (TAGs) enhance node representations with rich textual semantics, significantly boosting the expressive power of graph-based learning. However, this sophisticated synergy introduces critical vulnerabilities, as Graph-LLMs are susceptible to adversarial attacks on both their structural topology and textual attributes. Although specialized attack methods have been designed for each of these aspects, no work has yet unified them into a comprehensive approach. In this work, we propose the Interpretable Multi-Dimensional Graph Attack (IMDGA), a novel human-centric adversarial attack framework designed to orchestrate multi-level perturbations across both graph structure and textual features. IMDGA utilizes three tightly integrated modules to craft attacks that balance interpretability and impact, enabling a deeper understanding of Graph-LLM vulnerabilities. Through rigorous theoretical analysis and comprehensive empirical evaluations on diverse datasets and architectures, IMDGA demonstrates superior interpretability, attack effectiveness, stealthiness, and robustness compared to existing methods. By exposing critical weaknesses in TAG representation learning, this work uncovers a previously underexplored semantic dimension of vulnerability in Graph-LLMs, offering valuable insights for improving their resilience. Our code and resources are publicly available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/IMDGA-7289.
title Unveiling the Vulnerability of Graph-LLMs: An Interpretable Multi-Dimensional Adversarial Attack on TAGs
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12233