首次为RAG系统构建安全隐私威胁模型,揭示新攻击面。
RAG Security and Privacy: Formalizing the Threat Model and Attack Surface
- 按攻击者权限分类敌手类型,建立系统化威胁框架。
- 定义文档成员推理与数据投毒等关键攻击向量。
- 适合关注RAG安全的开发者与研究者阅读。
检索增强生成(RAG)通过结合大语言模型(LLM)与外部文档检索,提升了生成结果的准确性与事实一致性。尽管能有效减少幻觉,但RAG也引入了与传统LLM不同的隐私与安全挑战。现有研究表明,LLM可能因训练数据记忆或对抗性提示泄露敏感信息,而RAG系统继承了这些漏洞。同时,依赖外部知识库使系统面临新的攻击面,包括泄露检索文档的存在或内容,或注入恶意内容以操纵模型行为。目前尚无正式框架定义RAG系统的威胁场景。本文提出,据我们所知,首个针对检索增强型RAG系统的正式威胁模型。通过基于对手对模型组件和数据的访问权限,构建对手类型的结构化分类,并正式定义文档级成员推理与数据投毒等关键威胁向量,这些在实际部署中构成严重的隐私与完整性风险。本工作通过建立形式化定义与攻击模型,为更严谨、原则性的理解RAG系统中的隐私与安全问题奠定基础。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is an emerging approach in natural language processing that combines large language models (LLMs) with external document retrieval to produce more accurate and grounded responses. While RAG has shown strong potential in reducing hallucinations and improving factual consistency, it also introduces new privacy and security challenges that differ from those faced by traditional LLMs. Existing research has demonstrated that LLMs can leak sensitive information through training data memorization or adversarial prompts, and RAG systems inherit many of these vulnerabilities. At the same time, reliance of RAG on an external knowledge base opens new attack surfaces, including the potential for leaking information about the presence or content of retrieved documents, or for injecting malicious content to manipulate model behavior. Despite these risks, there is currently no formal framework that defines the threat landscape for RAG systems. In this paper, we address a critical gap in the literature by proposing, to the best of our knowledge, the first formal threat model for retrieval-RAG systems. We introduce a structured taxonomy of adversary types based on their access to model components and data, and we formally define key threat vectors such as document-level membership inference and data poisoning, which pose serious privacy and integrity risks in real-world deployments. By establishing formal definitions and attack models, our work lays the foundation for a more rigorous and principled understanding of privacy and security in RAG systems.
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