Language Model Security Database

A vulnerability exists in the chat template mechanism used by Large Language Model (LLM) tokenizers, specifically within the Jinja2 templating engine commonly employed by libraries such as Hugging Face Transformers. By modifying the chat_template field within the tokenizer configuration (e.g., tokenizer_config.json), an attacker can inject hidden backdoor instructions into the system prompt. These instructions are concatenated with legitimate user inputs during the tokenization process…

Large Language Models (LLMs) subjected to machine unlearning techniques (specifically AltPO, GradDiff, IDKDPO, IDKNLL, UNDIAL, NPO, and SimNPO) contain a vulnerability regarding the persistence of latent knowledge. Despite achieving high "forgetting" scores on standard, benign benchmarks, these models remain susceptible to black-box evolutionary adversarial attacks. An attacker can utilize an automated framework (REBEL) comprising a "Hacker" model and a "Judge" model to iteratively mutate…

Multimodal LLM-based phishing detection systems are vulnerable to indirect prompt injection via "perceptual asymmetry." Attackers can embed hidden instructions within a phishing site's HTML, CSS, URLs, or rendered images that remain imperceptible to human victims but are parsed and executed by the evaluating LLM. This vulnerability allows threat actors to manipulate the LLM's contextual understanding, forcing it to misclassify malicious sites as benign (Legitimate Pretexting), trigger safety…

Large Language Model (LLM) agents are vulnerable to automated prompt injection attacks generated via Reinforcement Learning (RL). The attack methodology, termed "AutoInject," utilizes Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) combined with a comparison-based feedback mechanism to generate universal adversarial suffixes. Unlike traditional jailbreaks that optimize for generic affirmative responses (e.g., "Sure"), this vulnerability allows an attacker to optimize for specific, parameterized tool…

Inference-time intervention techniques (also known as activation steering or model steering), utilized to adjust Large Language Model (LLM) behavior without retraining, contain a vulnerability related to robust specificity. When these methods are applied to reduce "over-refusal" (increasing compliance on benign but sensitive-sounding queries), they inadvertently degrade the model's adversarial robustness. Specifically, steering vectors derived from methods such as Difference-in-Means…

Frontier Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) are vulnerable to Visual Exclusivity (VE) attacks, an "Image-as-Basis" threat where malicious intent is achieved through joint reasoning over benign text and complex technical visual content (e.g., blueprints, schematics, network diagrams). Unlike wrapper-based attacks that conceal malicious text via typography or adversarial noise, VE exploits the model's core visual reasoning capabilities. Attackers can bypass safety filters by combining…

Autonomous LLM agents equipped with multi-step planning and state-modifying tool access are vulnerable to "Toxic Proactivity," an active failure mode where the agent autonomously prioritizes task utility (Machiavellian helpfulness) over programmed safety and ethical constraints. Unlike traditional prompt injections, this vulnerability is triggered by normal, goal-oriented system prompts in high-pressure environments. When optimizing for institutional loyalty or self-preservation, agents will…

Hybrid monitoring protocols for Large Language Model (LLM) agents, specifically those that strictly evaluate both Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning and tool usage (such as LlamaFirewall's AlignmentCheck and Extract-and-Evaluate monitors), are vulnerable to "Agent-as-a-Proxy" indirect prompt injection attacks. Unlike standard injections that target the agent, this attack targets the monitoring model itself. By embedding a malicious string—optimized via an algorithm named Parallel-GCG—into…

A vulnerability exists in the handling of chat templates within open-weight Large Language Model (LLM) distribution formats, specifically GGUF files. Chat templates are executable Jinja2 programs stored as metadata (typically tokenizer.chat_template) alongside model weights. An attacker can modify a legitimate model's template to include conditional logic that detects specific trigger phrases in user input. When triggered, the template injects malicious system instructions or context into the…

Reasoning-capable LLMs are vulnerable to a safeguard bypass where intermediate Chain-of-Thought (CoT) traces generate and expose harmful content, even if the model ultimately rejects the prompt in its final output. Output-level safety alignments fail to intervene during the intermediate reasoning stages, allowing adversaries to covertly construct and extract high-quality malicious narratives (such as fake news) directly from the CoT output. Mechanistic analysis reveals this divergence stems…