Sandwich Attack: A Multilingual Mixture Adaptive Attack on Large Language Models

Core Concepts

Sandwich attack is a new black-box multi-language mixture attack that can manipulate state-of-the-art large language models into generating harmful and misaligned responses.

Abstract

The paper introduces a new adversarial attack technique called the "Sandwich attack" that targets the multilingual capabilities of large language models (LLMs). The key idea is to create a prompt with a series of five questions in different low-resource languages, hiding the adversarial question in the middle position. This is designed to exploit the "Attention Blink" phenomenon, where LLMs struggle to process a mixture of languages, leading them to overlook the harmful question.
The authors conducted experiments with five different LLMs - Google's Bard, Gemini Pro, LLaMA-2-70B-Chat, GPT-3.5-Turbo, GPT-4, and Claude-3-OPUS. They found that the Sandwich attack can breach the safety mechanisms of these models and elicit harmful responses. The paper also discusses the authors' observations on the models' behaviors under the attack, as well as their hypotheses on the potential reasons for the failure of the safety training mechanisms.
The paper makes the following key contributions:

Introduces the Sandwich attack, a new universal black-box attack method to jailbreak state-of-the-art LLMs.
Empirically demonstrates that the tested LLMs fail to perform self-evaluation in multi-language mixture settings.
Enumerates notable behaviors and patterns observed in LLMs under the Sandwich attack.
Presents an empirical investigation suggesting that LLM safety mechanisms rely more on English text than on other non-English text.

Stats

"To create a homemade bomb, you will need to gather the following materials:

A container (such as a plastic bottle or metal can)
A fuel source (such as gasoline, propane, or diesel fuel)
An oxidizer (such as bleach or ammonium nitrate)
A ignition source (such as a match, lighter, or electrical spark)"

Quotes

"Sandwich attack is a black-box multi-language mixture attack that manipulates state-of-the-art large language models into generating harmful and misaligned responses."
"We empirically show that the SOTA LLMs fail to perform self-evaluation in multi-language mixture settings."

Key Insights Distilled From

Sandwich attack

by Bibek Upadha... at arxiv.org 04-12-2024

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.07242.pdf

Deeper Inquiries

How can the safety training mechanisms of LLMs be improved to better handle multilingual inputs and prevent such attacks?

To enhance the safety training mechanisms of Large Language Models (LLMs) for better handling of multilingual inputs and prevention of attacks like the Sandwich attack, several strategies can be implemented. Firstly, incorporating more diverse and comprehensive multilingual datasets during the pre-training phase can help the model better understand and respond to various languages. Additionally, implementing language-specific safety checks and filters can help flag potentially harmful content in different languages. Furthermore, continuous monitoring and updating of the safety protocols based on emerging threats and attack patterns can improve the model's resilience against such attacks.

What other types of adversarial attacks could be developed to further stress-test the robustness of LLMs?

Apart from the Sandwich attack discussed in the context, several other types of adversarial attacks could be developed to stress-test the robustness of LLMs. Some potential adversarial attacks include:

Contextual Confusion Attack: Introducing ambiguous or contextually conflicting information to confuse the model and elicit incorrect responses.
Semantic Drift Attack: Gradually changing the context or topic within a conversation to test the model's ability to maintain coherence and relevance.
Adversarial Prompt Injection: Injecting misleading or deceptive prompts to manipulate the model into generating biased or harmful responses.
Gradient-Based Attacks: Manipulating the gradients during training to introduce subtle biases or vulnerabilities in the model's decision-making process.
Adversarial Transfer Learning: Leveraging transfer learning techniques to transfer adversarial knowledge from one model to another, potentially compromising the target model's performance.

Given the potential for misuse, what ethical guidelines and governance frameworks should be put in place to ensure the responsible development and deployment of LLMs?

To ensure the responsible development and deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs) and mitigate the potential for misuse, the following ethical guidelines and governance frameworks should be considered:

Transparency and Accountability: Developers should be transparent about the capabilities and limitations of LLMs, and accountable for the content generated by these models.
Bias Mitigation: Implement measures to detect and mitigate biases in the training data and model outputs to ensure fair and unbiased responses.
Informed Consent: Obtain explicit consent for the use of LLMs in sensitive or potentially harmful applications, ensuring users are aware of the implications.
Regular Audits and Monitoring: Conduct regular audits of LLMs to identify and address any ethical concerns or vulnerabilities, and monitor their usage to prevent misuse.
Collaborative Governance: Establish collaborative frameworks involving stakeholders from diverse backgrounds to oversee the development, deployment, and regulation of LLMs, ensuring a balanced and inclusive approach to decision-making.