首次将强成员推断攻击扩展至大模型,揭示其实际效果有限且结果极不稳定。
Exploring the limits of strong membership inference attacks on large language models
- 将最强的LiRA攻击扩展到GPT-2系列(10M~1B参数),使用200亿词训练参考模型
- 在真实场景中攻击成功率不高(AUC<0.7),多数样本判断如抛硬币般随机
- 发现攻击结果虽整体有效,但单个样本决策极不稳定,揭示隐私风险被高估
当前最先进的成员推断攻击(MIAs)通常需训练大量参考模型,难以扩展至大型预训练语言模型(LLMs)。此前研究或依赖不需参考模型的弱攻击(如微调攻击),或仅在小模型上应用强攻击。然而,弱攻击易失效,且小规模实验的结论难以推广至现代大模型。本研究通过将最强的LiRA攻击扩展至参数量从10M到1B的GPT-2架构,使用来自C4数据集超过200亿词的训练数据训练参考模型,系统评估了大模型上的成员推断攻击能力。结果表明:(1)强攻击可在预训练大模型上成功执行;(2)其实际有效性仍受限制(例如AUC<0.7);(3)即使整体表现优于随机猜测,聚合指标掩盖了严重的单样本决策不稳定性——由于训练随机性,大量判断与抛硬币无异;(4)攻击成功率与现有大模型隐私度量之间的关系远比以往认为的复杂。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
State-of-the-art membership inference attacks (MIAs) typically require training many reference models, making it difficult to scale these attacks to large pre-trained language models (LLMs). As a result, prior research has either relied on weaker attacks that avoid training references (e.g., fine-tuning attacks), or on stronger attacks applied to small models and datasets. However, weaker attacks have been shown to be brittle and insights from strong attacks in simplified settings do not translate to today's LLMs. These challenges prompt an important question: are the limitations observed in prior work due to attack design choices, or are MIAs fundamentally ineffective on LLMs? We address this question by scaling LiRA--one of the strongest MIAs--to GPT-2 architectures ranging from 10M to 1B parameters, training references on over 20B tokens from the C4 dataset. Our results advance the understanding of MIAs on LLMs in four key ways. While (1) strong MIAs can succeed on pre-trained LLMs, (2) their effectiveness, remains limited (e.g., AUC<0.7) in practical settings. (3) Even when strong MIAs achieve better-than-random AUC, aggregate metrics can conceal substantial per-sample MIA decision instability: due to training randomness, many decisions are so unstable that they are statistically indistinguishable from a coin flip. Finally, (4) the relationship between MIA success and related LLM privacy metrics is not as straightforward as prior work has suggested.
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