@inproceedings{fu-etal-2026-inhibitory,
title = "Inhibitory Attacks on Backdoor-based Fingerprinting for Large Language Models",
author = "fu, Hang and
Peng, Wanli and
Zhou, Yinghan and
Wu, Jiaxuan and
Wen, Juan and
Yiming, Xue",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1207/",
pages = "26246--26266",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-390-6",
abstract = "The widespread adoption of Large Language Model (LLM) in commercial and research settings has intensified the need for robust intellectual property protection. Backdoor-based LLM fingerprinting has emerged as a promising solution for this challenge. In practical application, the low-cost multi-model collaborative technique, LLM ensemble, combines diverse LLMs to leverage their complementary strengths, garnering significant attention and practical adoption. Unfortunately, the vulnerability of existing LLM fingerprinting for the ensemble scenario is unexplored. In order to comprehensively assess the robustness of LLM fingerprinting, in this paper, we propose two novel fingerprinting attack methods: token filter attack (TFA) and sentence verification attack (SVA). The TFA gets the next token from a unified set of tokens created by the token filter mechanism at each decoding step. The SVA filters out fingerprint responses through a sentence verification mechanism based on perplexity and voting. Experimentally, the proposed methods effectively inhibit the fingerprint response while maintaining ensemble performance. Compared with state-of-the-art attack methods, the proposed method can achieve better performance. The findings necessitate enhanced robustness in LLM fingerprinting."
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<abstract>The widespread adoption of Large Language Model (LLM) in commercial and research settings has intensified the need for robust intellectual property protection. Backdoor-based LLM fingerprinting has emerged as a promising solution for this challenge. In practical application, the low-cost multi-model collaborative technique, LLM ensemble, combines diverse LLMs to leverage their complementary strengths, garnering significant attention and practical adoption. Unfortunately, the vulnerability of existing LLM fingerprinting for the ensemble scenario is unexplored. In order to comprehensively assess the robustness of LLM fingerprinting, in this paper, we propose two novel fingerprinting attack methods: token filter attack (TFA) and sentence verification attack (SVA). The TFA gets the next token from a unified set of tokens created by the token filter mechanism at each decoding step. The SVA filters out fingerprint responses through a sentence verification mechanism based on perplexity and voting. Experimentally, the proposed methods effectively inhibit the fingerprint response while maintaining ensemble performance. Compared with state-of-the-art attack methods, the proposed method can achieve better performance. The findings necessitate enhanced robustness in LLM fingerprinting.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Inhibitory Attacks on Backdoor-based Fingerprinting for Large Language Models
%A fu, Hang
%A Peng, Wanli
%A Zhou, Yinghan
%A Wu, Jiaxuan
%A Wen, Juan
%A Yiming, Xue
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-390-6
%F fu-etal-2026-inhibitory
%X The widespread adoption of Large Language Model (LLM) in commercial and research settings has intensified the need for robust intellectual property protection. Backdoor-based LLM fingerprinting has emerged as a promising solution for this challenge. In practical application, the low-cost multi-model collaborative technique, LLM ensemble, combines diverse LLMs to leverage their complementary strengths, garnering significant attention and practical adoption. Unfortunately, the vulnerability of existing LLM fingerprinting for the ensemble scenario is unexplored. In order to comprehensively assess the robustness of LLM fingerprinting, in this paper, we propose two novel fingerprinting attack methods: token filter attack (TFA) and sentence verification attack (SVA). The TFA gets the next token from a unified set of tokens created by the token filter mechanism at each decoding step. The SVA filters out fingerprint responses through a sentence verification mechanism based on perplexity and voting. Experimentally, the proposed methods effectively inhibit the fingerprint response while maintaining ensemble performance. Compared with state-of-the-art attack methods, the proposed method can achieve better performance. The findings necessitate enhanced robustness in LLM fingerprinting.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1207/
%P 26246-26266
Markdown (Informal)
[Inhibitory Attacks on Backdoor-based Fingerprinting for Large Language Models](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1207/) (fu et al., ACL 2026)
ACL