研究发现大模型按令牌计费存在被服务商恶意虚报的漏洞,可能让账单暴涨15倍。
Token Inflation: How Dishonest Providers Can Overcharge for Large Language Model Usage

- 通过分析审计框架漏洞,揭示服务商可利用信息不透明虚报令牌数。
- 在最宽松条件下,推理令牌数可虚报1469%,$100账单变$1569。
- 即使用户可见完整推理过程,分词歧义仍可导致超50%虚报而不被发现。
按令牌计费已成为商业大模型的标准定价模式,因此报告的令牌数量是否诚实直接影响用户支出。我们发现,这种计费方式从设计上难以审计:服务商隐藏模型、分词器和执行过程以保护知识产权、防止越狱并保障用户隐私,导致审计只能依赖服务商提供的证明。审计实质变为对服务商自身报告的一致性检查,形成“信任悖论”:任何审计都必须信任某些证据,但当前框架恰好信任了服务商最可能篡改的部分。我们研究了三种近期的令牌审计框架,发现具备普通商业能力的服务商可系统性地虚报令牌计数。在最宽松设置下,隐藏推理使用量平均可虚报1469%且不被检测;按当前前沿推理价格计算,$100的诚实账单可变为约$1569。即使用户能查看完整推理字符串,仅分词歧义本身仍允许50.85%的虚报低于检测阈值。这表明问题不在具体审计工具,而在于所有依赖被审计方提供证据的审计机制。恢复诚实计费需采用不依赖服务商控制证据的验证方式,如可信执行证明、推理的密码学证明或第三方重执行。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Per-token billing is now the standard pricing model for commercial large language models (LLMs), so the honesty of reported token counts directly affects what users pay. We show that this kind of billing is hard to audit by design: providers hide the model, the tokenizer, and the execution to protect their IP, mitigate jailbreaks, and preserve user privacy, which means an auditor can only inspect proofs the provider supplies. The audit therefore reduces to a consistency check on the provider's own reports. We call this a trust paradox: every audit must trust some artifact, but current frameworks trust exactly the ones a provider has the strongest reason to manipulate. We study three recent token auditing frameworks and show that a provider with ordinary commercial capabilities can systematically inflate billed token counts. In the most permissive setting, hidden reasoning usage can be inflated by 1,469% on average without detection. At current frontier reasoning prices, that turns a \$100 honest bill into roughly a \$1,569 bill on the same query. Even when the user can see the full reasoning string, tokenization ambiguity alone still allows 50.85% over-reporting below the detection threshold. These results suggest the problem is not in any specific auditor but in any audit whose evidence comes from the audited party. Restoring honest billing will require verification that ties reported token counts to evidence the provider does not control, such as trusted execution attestation, cryptographic proofs of inference, or third-party re-execution.
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