Poisoned-MRAG: Knowledge Poisoning Attacks to Multimodal Retrieval Augmented Generation

Multimodal retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) enhances the visual reasoning capability of vision-language models (VLMs) by dynamically accessing information from external knowledge bases. In this work, we introduce \textit{Poisoned-MRAG}, the first knowledge poisoning attack on multimodal RAG systems. Poisoned-MRAG injects a few carefully crafted image-text pairs into the multimodal knowledge database, manipulating VLMs to generate the attacker-desired response to a target query. Specifically, we formalize the attack as an optimization problem and propose two cross-modal attack strategies, dirty-label and clean-label, tailored to the attacker's knowledge and goals. Our extensive experiments across multiple knowledge databases and VLMs show that Poisoned-MRAG outperforms existing methods, achieving up to 98\% attack success rate with just five malicious image-text pairs injected into the InfoSeek database (481,782 pairs). Additionally, We evaluate 4 different defense strategies, including paraphrasing, duplicate removal, structure-driven mitigation, and purification, demonstrating their limited effectiveness and trade-offs against Poisoned-MRAG. Our results highlight the effectiveness and scalability of Poisoned-MRAG, underscoring its potential as a significant threat to multimodal RAG systems.

Optimization-based Prompt Injection Attack to LLM-as-a-Judge

LLM-as-a-Judge is a novel solution that can assess textual information with large language models (LLMs). Based on existing research studies, LLMs demonstrate remarkable performance in providing a compelling alternative to traditional human assessment. However, the robustness of these systems against prompt injection attacks remains an open question. In this work, we introduce JudgeDeceiver, a novel optimization-based prompt injection attack tailored to LLM-as-a-Judge. Our method formulates a precise optimization objective for attacking the decision-making process of LLM-as-a-Judge and utilizes an optimization algorithm to efficiently automate the generation of adversarial sequences, achieving targeted and effective manipulation of model evaluations. Compared to handcraft prompt injection attacks, our method demonstrates superior efficacy, posing a significant challenge to the current security paradigms of LLM-based judgment systems. Through extensive experiments, we showcase the capability of JudgeDeceiver in altering decision outcomes across various cases, highlighting the vulnerability of LLM-as-a-Judge systems to the optimization-based prompt injection attack.