# BAIT: Boundary-Guided Disclosure Escalation LLM Jailbreaking via Self-Conditioned Reasoning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.27110 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27110/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 7 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 May 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Reasoning for agents, planning and code](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reasoning-for-agents-planning-and-code/)
- LLM safety and security / [Jailbreaking](https://mlsanity.com/safety/jailbreaking/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [Gemma 3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19786/) (2025)
- [A Survey on LLM-as-a-Judge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15594/) (2024)
- [OpenAI GPT-5 System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03267/) (2025)
- [DeepSeek-V3.2: Pushing the Frontier of Open Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02556/) (2025)
- [Alignment and Safety in Large Language Models: Safety Mechanisms, Training Paradigms, and Emerging Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19672/) (2025)
- [Knowledge-Driven Multi-Turn Jailbreaking on Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.05445/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this work, we propose BAIT (Boundary-Aware Iterative Trap), a three-step jailbreak framework that elicits malicious information through internal disclosure by target large language models (LLMs), instead of external feedback from judge LLMs. BAIT first asks the model to identify the protection boundary, then requires it to refine that boundary, and finally requests a detailed example. By expanding each step upon the model's previous responses, BAIT turns the model's own reasoning and consistency tendency into a disclosure pathway. Experiments on AdvBench, JailbreakBench, AIR-Bench, and SORRY-Bench demonstrate that BAIT consistently achieves strong attack success rates across top-tier large language models, significantly advancing conventional jailbreak baselines. Further analysis reveals that: 1) prevention-oriented framing significantly outperforms direct knowledge requests; 2) the refinement step plays a critical role in disclosure escalation; and 3) the first two steps have a certain chance of eliciting harmful content while triggering little filtering. These findings underscore the necessity of safeguarding against internally driven reasoning trajectories that progressively cross safety boundaries.
