mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Evolve the Method, Not the Prompts: Evolutionary Synthesis of Jailbreak Attacks on LLMs

arXiv 2511.12710 ↗First posted 16 Nov 2025cs.CL cs.CRcited by 8

On the map: LLM safety and security → Prompt injection and agent security

Abstract (arXiv)

Automated red teaming frameworks for Large Language Models (LLMs) have become increasingly sophisticated, yet many still formulate attack optimization primarily in the prompt space. In other words, these methods mainly search for better attack wording or better strategy choices, but they do not search over executable code. By moving the search into code space, we can optimize not only the final attack prompt, but also the procedure that generates it, including execution flow, reusable logic, branching, and failure-driven repair. To overcome this gap, we introduce EvoSynth, an autonomous multi-agent framework that shifts the optimization space from prompts to executable code. Instead of refining prompts directly, EvoSynth employs a multi-agent system to autonomously engineer, evolve, and execute code-based attack algorithms. Crucially, it features a code-level self-correction loop, allowing it to iteratively rewrite the code-based algorithm in response to target-model feedback and failed attempts. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that EvoSynth achieves an 85.5% Attack Success Rate (ASR) against highly robust models like Claude-Sonnet-4.5 and a 95.9% average ASR across evaluated targets, while generating attacks that are significantly more diverse than those from existing methods. We release our framework to facilitate future research on evolutionary synthesis in executable code space.

Key facts. Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Prompt injection and agent security, one of 12 directions in LLM safety and security. Builds on 57 of its 82 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Nov 2025.

Builds on

57 of 82 references.

Closest ancestors · 7

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025AutoRedTeamer: Autonomous Red Teaming with Lifelong Attack Integration20 Mar
  2. 2024Attention Tracker: Detecting Prompt Injection Attacks in LLMs1 Nov
  3. 2024RedAgent: Red Teaming Large Language Models with Context-aware Autonomous Language Agent23 Jul
  4. 2024Rainbow Teaming: Open-Ended Generation of Diverse Adversarial Prompts26 Feb
  5. 2024HarmBench: A Standardized Evaluation Framework for Automated Red Teaming and Robust Refusal6 Feb
  6. 2022Red Teaming Language Models to Reduce Harms: Methods, Scaling Behaviors, and Lessons Learned23 Aug
  7. 2022Red Teaming Language Models with Language Models7 Feb

Other references · 50

  1. 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 14,132
  2. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,588
  3. 2023Universal and Transferable Adversarial Attacks on Aligned Language Modelscited by 3,104
  4. 2022Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedbackcited by 3,050
  5. 2023Jailbreaking Black Box Large Language Models in Twenty Queriescited by 1,420
  6. 2023AutoDAN: Generating Stealthy Jailbreak Prompts on Aligned Large Language Modelscited by 785
  7. 2023Tree of Attacks: Jailbreaking Black-Box LLMs Automaticallycited by 672
  8. 2024DeepSeek LLM: Scaling Open-Source Language Models with Longtermismcited by 642
  9. 2023GPTFUZZER: Red Teaming Large Language Models with Auto-Generated Jailbreak Promptscited by 560
  10. 2024JailbreakBench: An Open Robustness Benchmark for Jailbreaking Large Language Modelscited by 536
  11. 2023Jailbreaking ChatGPT via Prompt Engineering: An Empirical Studycited by 498
  12. 2023SmoothLLM: Defending Large Language Models Against Jailbreaking Attackscited by 469
38 more
  1. 2024Great, Now Write an Article About That: The Crescendo Multi-Turn LLM Jailbreak Attackcited by 390
  2. 2022A Holistic Approach to Undesired Content Detection in the Real Worldcited by 356
  3. 2024Improving Alignment and Robustness with Circuit Breakerscited by 322
  4. 2024Deliberative Alignment: Reasoning Enables Safer Language Modelscited by 308
  5. 2024SALAD-Bench: A Hierarchical and Comprehensive Safety Benchmark for Large Language Modelscited by 228
  6. 2024WildTeaming at Scale: From In-the-Wild Jailbreaks to (Adversarially) Safer Language Modelscited by 223
  7. 2024AutoDAN-Turbo: A Lifelong Agent for Strategy Self-Exploration to Jailbreak LLMscited by 199
  8. 2022A New Generation of Perspective API: Efficient Multilingual Character-level Transformerscited by 185
  9. 2023Sociotechnical Safety Evaluation of Generative AI Systemscited by 157
  10. 2024Robust Prompt Optimization for Defending Language Models Against Jailbreaking Attackscited by 156
  11. 2024LLM Defenses Are Not Robust to Multi-Turn Human Jailbreaks Yetcited by 151
  12. 2023Open Sesame! Universal Black Box Jailbreaking of Large Language Modelscited by 134
  13. 2024Simulating Classroom Education with LLM-Empowered Agentscited by 127
  14. 2025Memento: Fine-tuning LLM Agents without Fine-tuning LLMscited by 127
  15. 2025X-Teaming: Multi-Turn Jailbreaks and Defenses with Adaptive Multi-Agentscited by 125
  16. 2024On Prompt-Driven Safeguarding for Large Language Modelscited by 116
  17. 2025A Comprehensive Survey in LLM(-Agent) Full Stack Safety: Data, Training and Deploymentcited by 116
  18. 2024Attacking Large Language Models with Projected Gradient Descentcited by 94
  19. 2024Chain of Attack: a Semantic-Driven Contextual Multi-Turn attacker for LLMcited by 77
  20. 2024AIR-Bench 2024: A Safety Benchmark Based on Risk Categories from Regulations and Policiescited by 74
  21. 2024Fight Back Against Jailbreaking via Prompt Adversarial Tuningcited by 67
  22. 2025Reasoning-Augmented Conversation for Multi-Turn Jailbreak Attacks on Large Language Modelscited by 64
  23. 2024SelfDefend: LLMs Can Defend Themselves against Jailbreaking in a Practical Mannercited by 63
  24. 2024EasyJailbreak: A Unified Framework for Jailbreaking Large Language Modelscited by 60
  25. 2025JBShield: Defending Large Language Models from Jailbreak Attacks through Activated Concept Analysis and Manipulationcited by 54
  26. 2022CodeAttack: Code-Based Adversarial Attacks for Pre-trained Programming Language Modelscited by 53
  27. 2023Adversarial Attacks and Defenses in Large Language Models: Old and New Threatscited by 49
  28. 2024ALI-Agent: Assessing LLMs' Alignment with Human Values via Agent-based Evaluationcited by 47
  29. 2024Distract Large Language Models for Automatic Jailbreak Attackcited by 45
  30. 2024AI Risk Categorization Decoded (AIR 2024): From Government Regulations to Corporate Policiescited by 37
  31. 2024Llama Guard 3-1B-INT4: Compact and Efficient Safeguard for Human-AI Conversationscited by 26
  32. 2024h4rm3l: A language for Composable Jailbreak Attack Synthesiscited by 24
  33. 2024STAND-Guard: A Small Task-Adaptive Content Moderation Modelcited by 12
  34. 2025Beyond Surface-Level Patterns: An Essence-Driven Defense Framework Against Jailbreak Attacks in LLMscited by 9
  35. 2024LLM-Virus: Evolutionary Jailbreak Attack on Large Language Modelscited by 7
  36. 2025Proactive defense against LLM Jailbreakcited by 7
  37. 2025GenBreak: Red Teaming Text-to-Image Generators Using Large Language Modelscited by 4
  38. 2025Evo-MARL: Co-Evolutionary Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Internalized Safetycited by 4

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 8.

8 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026A Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Framework Defense against LLM Jailbreak Attacks
  2. 2026AutoRISE: Agent-Driven Strategy Evolution for Red-Teaming Large Language Models
  3. 2026EvoFlint: An Evolutionary Atlas of Multi-Turn LLM Vulnerabilities
  4. 2025Evaluating Multi-Agent Defences Against Jailbreaking Attacks on Large Language Models
  5. 2026EvoJail: Evolutionary Diverse Jailbreak Prompt Generation for Large Language Models
  6. 2025Genesis: Evolving Attack Strategies for LLM Web Agent Red-Teaming
  7. 2026Metis: Learning to Jailbreak LLMs via Self-Evolving Metacognitive Policy Optimization
  8. 2025From LLMs to MLLMs to Agents: A Survey of Emerging Paradigms in Jailbreak Attacks and Defenses within LLM Ecosystem