现有视频模型防御措施对观察级攻击无效,因核心处理流程会抑制有害信号。
Do Input-Level Defenses Transfer to Observation-Level Attacks on VideoLLMs?

- 构建测试框架DefTEval,评估输入级防御在视频采样后是否有效
- 多数防御对五类攻击检测率接近零,即使每帧都含恶意信号也失效
- 模型架构比防御方法更影响效果,暴露时序推理结构性缺陷
视频大语言模型(VideoLLMs)被广泛应用于内容审核等安全关键场景。为高效处理长视频,其采用帧采样、令牌压缩和模态融合构成的观察管道,将原始视频缩减为紧凑内部表征。近期观察级攻击利用该管道使模型无法感知有害内容,但尚无针对性防御。本文提出DefTEval,系统评估输入级对抗防御(作用于已采样帧的像素内容)能否缓解此类攻击。在五种VideoLLMs、十一类代表性防御及五种攻击类型下,发现输入级防御保护能力有限且不一致,有害内容检测率常趋近于零。关键问题是:即使攻击在每一采样帧中嵌入有害信号,防御仍失败,表明瓶颈不仅在于采样遗漏,更在于进入模型的信号被压制。令牌压缩会丢弃局部特征,模态融合则系统性弱化视觉信号。此外,防御效果主要由模型架构决定,而非防御方法本身;不同内容类别间检测率差异巨大,暴露出时序推理的结构性弱点。研究揭示,保障VideoLLMs需端到端的系统级鲁棒机制,涵盖采样感知覆盖、令牌级安全特征保留与模态平衡融合。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Video Large Language Models (VideoLLMs) are increasingly deployed in safety-critical applications such as content moderation and video analytics. To process long videos efficiently, VideoLLMs rely on frame sampling, token compression, and modality fusion, which together form an observation pipeline that reduces the raw video to a compact internal representation. Recent observation-level attacks exploit this pipeline to prevent the model from perceiving harmful content, yet no defense has been explicitly designed for this threat. We introduce DefTEval, a controlled evaluation framework that systematically assesses whether input-level adversarial defenses, which operate on the pixel content of already-sampled frames, can mitigate observation-level attacks. Across five VideoLLMs, eleven representative defenses, and five attack types, we find that input-level defenses offer limited and inconsistent protection, with harmful detection rates frequently near zero. Critically, defenses fail even against attacks that embed harmful signals in every sampled frame, indicating that the bottleneck extends beyond sampling omission to the suppression of signals that do enter the model. Token compression discards localized features, and modality fusion systematically down-weights weakened visual signals. Furthermore, defense effectiveness is dominated by model architecture rather than by the defense method itself, and detection rates vary drastically across content categories, exposing structural weaknesses in temporal reasoning. These findings demonstrate that securing VideoLLMs requires system-level robustness mechanisms spanning sampling-aware coverage guarantees, token-level preservation of safety-relevant features, and modality-balanced fusion.
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