aiqbench analysis
This research introduces a compute-aware framework that measures adversarial effort in cumulative FLOPs rather than fixed query counts, revealing that traditional attack success rates obscure the true cost of jailbreaking models. The study demonstrates that while scaling model size hampers expensive gradient-based attacks, it offers limited protection against cheaper template-based methods, and that alignment training impacts robustness non-monotonically across different harm categories. By releasing metrics that map compute budgets to attack risk, the authors provide a more realistic assessment of the effort required to compromise LLMs, which is critical for evaluating the economic feasibility of adversarial attacks.
Risk Under Pressure: Compute-Aware Evaluation of Adversarial Robustness in Language Models
arXiv:2606.11409v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Adversarial robustness evaluations of large language models (LLMs) typically report attack success rate (ASR) under fixed query budgets, implicitly treating all attacks as equally costly. In practice, the computational expense of different attack strategies can vary by orders of magnitude. Consequently, ASR at a fixed budget can obscure the true effort required to jailbreak a model, thereby making it hard to determine whether an attack's cost justifies its payoff to the attacker. We propose a compute-aware evaluation framework based on computational pressure, measured in cumulative floating-point operations (FLOPs), as a proxy for adversarial effort. We introduce risk-compute curves, which map compute budgets to attack risk, and derive two metrics that summarize the average pressure required for a given attack to succeed. Across ten models spanning three families and four different stages in language model training and alignment, evaluated with three attack strategies (gradient-based, iterative refinement, and template-based) on two jailbreak robustness benchmarks, we find: (1) alignment training has non-monotonic effects on compute-space robustness; (2) scaling model size reduces gradient-based attack effectiveness but has limited impact on cheaper template-based attacks; (3) gradient-based attacks optimized on a surrogate model can transfer to a separate target model, providing a way to reduce attacker costs; (4) compute cost varies by up to ${\approx}5{\times}$ across harm categories within a single model; and (5) safety-aligned RL increases aggregate cost while leaving some categories disproportionately accessible. We release our framework to enable compute-aware risk assessment and evaluation.
Abstract:Adversarial robustness evaluations of large language models (LLMs) typically report attack success rate (ASR) under fixed query budgets, implicitly treating all attacks as equally costly. In practice, the computational expense of different attack strategies can vary by orders of magnitude. Consequently, ASR at a fixed budget can obscure the true effort required to jailbreak a model, thereby making it hard to determine whether an attack's cost justifies its payoff to the attacker. We propose a compute-aware evaluation framework based on computational pressure, measured in cumulative floating-point operations (FLOPs), as a proxy for adversarial effort. We introduce risk-compute curves, which map compute budgets to attack risk, and derive two metrics that summarize the average pressure required for a given attack to succeed. Across ten models spanning three families and four different stages in language model training and alignment, evaluated with three attack strategies (gradient-based, iterative refinement, and template-based) on two jailbreak robustness benchmarks, we find: (1) alignment training has non-monotonic effects on compute-space robustness; (2) scaling model size reduces gradient-based attack effectiveness but has limited impact on cheaper template-based attacks; (3) gradient-based attacks optimized on a surrogate model can transfer to a separate target model, providing a way to reduce attacker costs; (4) compute cost varies by up to ${\approx}5{\times}$ across harm categories within a single model; and (5) safety-aligned RL increases aggregate cost while leaving some categories disproportionately accessible. We release our framework to enable compute-aware risk assessment and evaluation.
Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR)
arXiv:2606.11409 [cs.LG]
(or arXiv:2606.11409v1 [cs.LG] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.11409 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 341 words
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