Acoustic Interference: A New Paradigm Weaponizing Acoustic Latent Semantic for Universal Jailbreak against Large Audio Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Wang, Yanyun, Huang, Yu, Liang, Zi, Wu, Xixin, Liu, Li
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Wang, Yanyun
Huang, Yu
Liang, Zi
Wu, Xixin
Liu, Li
author_facet Wang, Yanyun
Huang, Yu
Liang, Zi
Wu, Xixin
Liu, Li
contents The integration of audio modality into Large Audio Language Models (LALMs) significantly expands their attack surface. Existing jailbreak paradigms predominantly treat audio as a carrier for malicious payloads, relying on semantic optimization, acoustic parameter control, or additive perturbation to embed harmful content into the audio signal. In this work, we challenge this necessity and propose a new paradigm in which the role of audio shifts from content injection to safety alignment interference. We reveal that LALM safety alignment can be compromised solely by specific Acoustic Latent Semantics (ALS), the underlying paralinguistic features intrinsic to the priors of audio generative models. Distinct from previous works that leverage explicit acoustic parameters to merely style malicious audio, we demonstrate that interference audio, benign in content but infused with specific ALS, can serve as a universal jailbreak trigger. Leveraging this insight, we propose the Acoustic Interference Attack (AIA), which decouples the attack payload from the audio. Specifically, AIA employs a set of universal, instruction-neutral interference audio, enabling standard malicious text queries to bypass safety alignment without instance-specific optimization. Extensive experiments on 10 LALMs across five datasets demonstrate that AIA achieves the state-of-the-art attack success rate. Furthermore, our interpretability analysis uncovers the inference path drift induced by AIA and identifies the inherent effective patterns within ALS, revealing the fundamental vulnerability of cross-modal alignment in LALMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_18168
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Acoustic Interference: A New Paradigm Weaponizing Acoustic Latent Semantic for Universal Jailbreak against Large Audio Language Models
Wang, Yanyun
Huang, Yu
Liang, Zi
Wu, Xixin
Liu, Li
Cryptography and Security
Sound
The integration of audio modality into Large Audio Language Models (LALMs) significantly expands their attack surface. Existing jailbreak paradigms predominantly treat audio as a carrier for malicious payloads, relying on semantic optimization, acoustic parameter control, or additive perturbation to embed harmful content into the audio signal. In this work, we challenge this necessity and propose a new paradigm in which the role of audio shifts from content injection to safety alignment interference. We reveal that LALM safety alignment can be compromised solely by specific Acoustic Latent Semantics (ALS), the underlying paralinguistic features intrinsic to the priors of audio generative models. Distinct from previous works that leverage explicit acoustic parameters to merely style malicious audio, we demonstrate that interference audio, benign in content but infused with specific ALS, can serve as a universal jailbreak trigger. Leveraging this insight, we propose the Acoustic Interference Attack (AIA), which decouples the attack payload from the audio. Specifically, AIA employs a set of universal, instruction-neutral interference audio, enabling standard malicious text queries to bypass safety alignment without instance-specific optimization. Extensive experiments on 10 LALMs across five datasets demonstrate that AIA achieves the state-of-the-art attack success rate. Furthermore, our interpretability analysis uncovers the inference path drift induced by AIA and identifies the inherent effective patterns within ALS, revealing the fundamental vulnerability of cross-modal alignment in LALMs.
title Acoustic Interference: A New Paradigm Weaponizing Acoustic Latent Semantic for Universal Jailbreak against Large Audio Language Models
topic Cryptography and Security
Sound
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.18168