mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Secret Stealing Attacks on Local LLM Fine-Tuning through Supply-Chain Model Code Backdoors

arXiv 2604.27426 ↗First posted 30 Apr 2026cs.CR cs.AIcited by 0

On the map: LLM safety and security → Membership inference attacks

Abstract (arXiv)

Local fine-tuning datasets routinely contain sensitive secrets such as API keys, personal identifiers, and financial records. Although "local offline fine-tuning" is often viewed as a privacy boundary, we reveal that compromised model code is sufficient to steal them. Current passive pretrained-weight poisoning attacks, while effective for natural language, fundamentally fail to capture such sparse high-entropy targets due to their reliance on probabilistic semantic prefixes. To bridge this gap, we identify and exploit a practical but overlooked supply-chain vector -- malicious model code camouflaged as standard architectural definitions to realize a paradigm shift from passive weight poisoning to active execution hijacking. We introduce a deterministic full-chain memorization mechanism: it locks onto token-level secrets in dynamic computation flows via online tensor-rule matching, and leverages value-gradient decoupling to stealthily inject attack gradients, overcoming gradient drowning to force model memorization. Furthermore, we achieve, for the first time, attacker-verifiable secret stealing through black-box queries that precisely distinguishes true leakage from hallucination. Our attack achieves over 98% Strict ASR in the default LoRA setting with limited primary-task utility degradation and effectively evades defense measures including semantic safety filtering, code auditing, and perplexity-based detection.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Membership inference attacks, one of 12 directions in LLM safety and security. Builds on 31 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Apr 2026.

Builds on

31 of 48 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Towards Label-Only Membership Inference Attack against Pre-trained Large Language Models26 Feb
  2. 2024PreCurious: How Innocent Pre-Trained Language Models Turn into Privacy Traps14 Mar

Other references · 29

  1. 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,192
  2. 2021Program Synthesis with Large Language Modelscited by 3,509
  3. 2016Membership Inference Attacks against Machine Learning Modelscited by 2,221
  4. 2020Extracting Training Data from Large Language Modelscited by 2,144
  5. 2022Quantifying Memorization Across Neural Language Modelscited by 755
  6. 2020Backdoor Learning: A Surveycited by 412
  7. 2023ChatDoctor: A Medical Chat Model Fine-Tuned on a Large Language Model Meta-AI (LLaMA) Using Medical Domain Knowledgecited by 324
  8. 2023Magicoder: Empowering Code Generation with OSS-Instructcited by 251
  9. 2020Dataset Security for Machine Learning: Data Poisoning, Backdoor Attacks, and Defensescited by 171
  10. 2023Backdooring Instruction-Tuned Large Language Models with Virtual Prompt Injectioncited by 143
  11. 2023Instructions as Backdoors: Backdoor Vulnerabilities of Instruction Tuning for Large Language Modelscited by 100
  12. 2022Truth Serum: Poisoning Machine Learning Models to Reveal Their Secretscited by 94
17 more
  1. 2021Does BERT Pretrained on Clinical Notes Reveal Sensitive Data?cited by 91
  2. 2024BadEdit: Backdooring large language models by model editingcited by 84
  3. 2024BadChain: Backdoor Chain-of-Thought Prompting for Large Language Modelscited by 74
  4. 2022A Unified Evaluation of Textual Backdoor Learning: Frameworks and Benchmarkscited by 70
  5. 2022BadPrompt: Backdoor Attacks on Continuous Promptscited by 59
  6. 2019This Email Could Save Your Life: Introducing the Task of Email Subject Line Generationcited by 58
  7. 2022BITE: Textual Backdoor Attacks with Iterative Trigger Injectioncited by 47
  8. 2024BackdoorLLM: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Backdoor Attacks and Defenses on Large Language Modelscited by 44
  9. 2023Ethicist: Targeted Training Data Extraction Through Loss Smoothed Soft Prompting and Calibrated Confidence Estimationcited by 36
  10. 2024A Survey of Recent Backdoor Attacks and Defenses in Large Language Modelscited by 36
  11. 2024An LLM-Assisted Easy-to-Trigger Backdoor Attack on Code Completion Models: Injecting Disguised Vulnerabilities against Strong Detectioncited by 32
  12. 2024Privacy Backdoors: Stealing Data with Corrupted Pretrained Modelscited by 20
  13. 2024When Backdoors Speak: Understanding LLM Backdoor Attacks Through Model-Generated Explanationscited by 16
  14. 2024Learning to Poison Large Language Models for Downstream Manipulationcited by 15
  15. 2025Be Careful When Fine-tuning On Open-Source LLMs: Your Fine-tuning Data Could Be Secretly Stolen!cited by 5
  16. 2024Memory Backdoor Attacks on Neural Networkscited by 3
  17. 2026An Empirical Study on Remote Code Execution in Machine Learning Model Hosting Ecosystemscited by 2

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