arXiv:2604.25102cs.CV2026-04

通过字体扰动探测视觉语言模型安全漏洞,揭示攻击成功的双重机制。

One Perturbation, Two Failure Modes: Probing VLM Safety via Embedding-Guided Typographic Perturbations

论文配图:One Perturbation, Two Failure Modes: Probing VLM Safety via Embedding-Guided Typographic Perturbations
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 用嵌入距离预测攻击成功率,提供可解释的通用评估方法。
  • 扰动优化同时恢复文本可读性和降低拒绝响应,提升攻击效果。
  • 适用于安全测试和红队演练,尤其适合研究模型防御弱点的人。

文字渲染提示注入利用视觉语言模型(VLMs)解析图像中文本的能力,成为日益严重的威胁,尤其在自主代理中。现有工作多关注最大化攻击成功率(ASR),但未解释为何某些渲染能绕过安全对齐。本文有两项贡献:首先,在四个VLM(包括GPT-4o和Claude)上,测试十二种字体大小与十种变换,发现多模态嵌入距离能强预测ASR(相关系数r = -0.71至-0.93,p < 0.01),提供可解释、模型无关的代理指标;其次,基于此构建红队工具,通过CWA-SSA在限定ℓ∞扰动下直接最大化图像文本嵌入相似性,无需访问目标模型即可压力测试可读性与安全对齐两个因素。在五种退化设置下对GPT-4o、Claude Sonnet 4.5、Mistral-Large-3和Qwen3-VL的实验表明,优化能同时恢复可读性并减少安全拒绝,两种效应共现,主导机制取决于模型安全过滤强度与视觉退化程度。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Typographic prompt injection exploits vision language models' (VLMs) ability to read text rendered in images, posing a growing threat as VLMs power autonomous agents. Prior work typically focus on maximizing attack success rate (ASR) but does not explain \emph{why} certain renderings bypass safety alignment. We make two contributions. First, an empirical study across four VLMs including GPT-4o and Claude, twelve font sizes, and ten transformations reveals that multimodal embedding distance strongly predicts ASR ($r{=}{-}0.71$ to ${-}0.93$, $p{<}0.01$), providing an interpretable, model agnostic proxy. Since embedding distance predicts ASR, reducing it should improve attack success, but the relationship is mediated by two factors: perceptual readability (whether the VLM can parse the text) and safety alignment (whether it refuses to comply). Second, we use this as a red teaming tool: we directly maximize image text embedding similarity under bounded $\ell_\infty$ perturbations via CWA-SSA across four surrogate embedding models, stress testing both factors without access to the target model. Experiments across five degradation settings on GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet 4.5, Mistral-Large-3, and Qwen3-VL confirm that optimization recovers readability and reduces safety aligned refusals as two co-occurring effects, with the dominant mechanism depending on the model's safety filter strength and the degree of visual degradation.

VLM安全提示注入红队测试嵌入距离

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