arXiv:2608.20055cs.CRcs.AI2026-08

从大模型API中提取隐藏的推理链条,揭示其内部思考过程。

EchoCoT: Extracting Hidden Chain-of-Thought from Large Reasoning Models

论文配图:EchoCoT: Extracting Hidden Chain-of-Thought from Large Reasoning Models
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 通过工具调用间的推理重现表面,设计多步攻击提取隐藏推理链。
  • 在开源模型上成功提取66.4%近原文内容,90%以上词元完全匹配。
  • 可跨数据集泛化,适用于闭源大模型,暴露其推理长度与结构。

隐藏的链式思维(CoT)轨迹,尤其是前沿闭源大推理模型(LRMs)中的,是宝贵的模型资产。然而,这些隐藏的CoT能否通过API交互直接提取仍鲜有研究。本文系统探究了从黑盒LRM中近乎原样提取隐藏CoT的可能性。我们发现工具调用间存在此前被忽视的推理重现表面,并提出EchoCoT——一种利用API返回保真信号进行迭代提取的多步攻击方法。此外,我们开发了一个基于LLM的优化框架,自动搜索跨多种数据集的有效通用注入路径。在三个开源和五个前沿闭源LRM上评估,对开源模型,EchoCoT实现最高66.4%的近原文提取成功率,提取轨迹长度误差小于10%,至少90%的词元与目标完全一致。相同注入路径在未见数据集上仍达80%提取成功率。对于测试的闭源模型,提取的CoT与厂商报告的推理长度及可用的CoT摘要高度一致。EchoCoT还能提取极长推理链:在Gemini-2.5上,从32,948词元的目标中提取出33,463词元。结果确立了隐藏CoT提取的实际安全风险,凸显保护此类资产的迫切性。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Hidden chain-of-thought (CoT) traces, especially those from frontier proprietary large reasoning models (LRMs), are valuable model assets. Yet whether these hidden CoTs can be directly extracted from black-box models remains largely unexplored. In this work, we systematically study whether hidden CoTs can be extracted near-verbatim from black-box LRMs through API interactions. We identify a previously overlooked reasoning replay surface between tool calls and develop EchoCoT, a multi-step attack that iteratively extracts hidden CoTs using API-returned fidelity signals. We further develop an LLM-based optimization framework that automatically searches for an effective universal injection trajectory across various datasets. We evaluate EchoCoT on three open-source and five frontier proprietary LRMs. On open-source LRMs, EchoCoT achieves up to 66.4\% near-verbatim extraction success, with the extracted trace length within 10\% of the target and at least 90\% of tokens exactly matching the target CoT. The same injection trajectory also generalizes to unseen datasets, achieving up to 80\% extraction success under the same criterion. For tested frontier proprietary LRMs, a substantial fraction of extracted CoTs closely align with provider-reported reasoning lengths and available CoT summaries. EchoCoT can also extract very long CoTs: on Gemini-2.5, it extracts 33,463 tokens from a 32,948-token target. These results establish hidden-CoT extraction as a practical security risk and highlight the need to better protect hidden CoT assets.

大模型安全推理提取链式思维黑盒攻击

Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。