RAG-targeted Adversarial Attack on LLM-based Threat Detection and Mitigation Framework

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Ikbarieh, Seif, Aryal, Kshitiz, Gupta, Maanak
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Ikbarieh, Seif
Aryal, Kshitiz
Gupta, Maanak
author_facet Ikbarieh, Seif
Aryal, Kshitiz
Gupta, Maanak
contents The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) is reshaping communication and operational practices across industries, but it also broadens the attack surface and increases susceptibility to security breaches. Artificial Intelligence has become a valuable solution in securing IoT networks, with Large Language Models (LLMs) enabling automated attack behavior analysis and mitigation suggestion in Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS). Despite advancements, the use of LLMs in such systems further expands the attack surface, putting entire networks at risk by introducing vulnerabilities such as prompt injection and data poisoning. In this work, we attack an LLM-based IoT attack analysis and mitigation framework to test its adversarial robustness. We construct an attack description dataset and use it in a targeted data poisoning attack that applies word-level, meaning-preserving perturbations to corrupt the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) knowledge base of the framework. We then compare pre-attack and post-attack mitigation responses from the target model, ChatGPT-5 Thinking, to measure the impact of the attack on model performance, using an established evaluation rubric designed for human experts and judge LLMs. Our results show that small perturbations degrade LLM performance by weakening the linkage between observed network traffic features and attack behavior, and by reducing the specificity and practicality of recommended mitigations for resource-constrained devices.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_06212
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle RAG-targeted Adversarial Attack on LLM-based Threat Detection and Mitigation Framework
Ikbarieh, Seif
Aryal, Kshitiz
Gupta, Maanak
Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) is reshaping communication and operational practices across industries, but it also broadens the attack surface and increases susceptibility to security breaches. Artificial Intelligence has become a valuable solution in securing IoT networks, with Large Language Models (LLMs) enabling automated attack behavior analysis and mitigation suggestion in Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS). Despite advancements, the use of LLMs in such systems further expands the attack surface, putting entire networks at risk by introducing vulnerabilities such as prompt injection and data poisoning. In this work, we attack an LLM-based IoT attack analysis and mitigation framework to test its adversarial robustness. We construct an attack description dataset and use it in a targeted data poisoning attack that applies word-level, meaning-preserving perturbations to corrupt the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) knowledge base of the framework. We then compare pre-attack and post-attack mitigation responses from the target model, ChatGPT-5 Thinking, to measure the impact of the attack on model performance, using an established evaluation rubric designed for human experts and judge LLMs. Our results show that small perturbations degrade LLM performance by weakening the linkage between observed network traffic features and attack behavior, and by reducing the specificity and practicality of recommended mitigations for resource-constrained devices.
title RAG-targeted Adversarial Attack on LLM-based Threat Detection and Mitigation Framework
topic Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06212