Patcher: Post-Hoc Patching of Backdoored Large Language Models 文章

ArXiv CS.AI2026-06-03NEWSen作者: Anjun Gao, Yueyang Quan, Yufei Xia, Zhuqing Liu, Minghong Fang

摘要

arXiv:2606.02995v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models remain vulnerable to jailbreak backdoor attacks, where adversaries poison safety alignment data to embed hidden triggers that bypass safety mechanisms. Existing defenses often require comprehensive attack information or multiple triggered examples, making them impractical when defenders only observe a single reported failure case without knowing whether it stems from a backdoor attack or a natural alignment bug. This paper presents Patcher, a post-hoc defense framework that repairs backdoored language models using only a single reported failure case and the model parameters. Patcher operates in two stages. First, it localizes backdoor triggers by computing response-conditioned gradient-based saliency scores and applying adaptive clustering to separate triggers from benign context.