EMNLP 2025

November 07, 2025

Suzhou, China

Would you like to see your presentation here, made available to a global audience of researchers?
Add your own presentation or have us affordably record your next conference.

As large language models (LLMs) become integrated into sensitive workflows, concerns grow over their potential to leak confidential information. We propose TrojanStego, a novel threat model in which an adversary fine-tunes an LLM to embed sensitive context information into natural-looking outputs via linguistic steganography, without requiring explicit control over inference inputs. We introduce a taxonomy outlining risk factors for compromised LLMs, and use it to evaluate the risk profile of the threat. To implement TrojanStego, we propose a practical encoding scheme based on vocabulary partitioning learnable by LLMs via fine-tuning. Experimental results show that compromised models reliably transmit 32-bit secrets with 87% accuracy on held-out prompts, reaching over 97% accuracy using majority voting across three generations. Further, they maintain high utility, can evade human detection, and preserve coherence. These results highlight a new class of LLM data exfiltration attacks that are passive, covert, practical, and dangerous.

Downloads

SlidesPaperTranscript English (automatic)

Next from EMNLP 2025

CogDual: Enhancing Dual Cognition of LLMs via Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Rule-Based Rewards
poster

CogDual: Enhancing Dual Cognition of LLMs via Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Rule-Based Rewards

EMNLP 2025

+5Xingyu Chen
Xingyu Chen and 7 other authors

07 November 2025

Stay up to date with the latest Underline news!

Select topic of interest (you can select more than one)

PRESENTATIONS

  • All Presentations
  • For Librarians
  • Resource Center
  • Free Trial
Underline Science, Inc.
1216 Broadway, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10001, USA

© 2025 Underline - All rights reserved