LLM Role Confusion Attack Bypasses Safety at 61%
New research from Ye, Cui, and Hadfield-Menell demonstrates that LLMs prioritise the stylistic format of text over its structural role tags, enabling attackers to craft injected content that mimics internal reasoning blocks and bypasses safety guardrails. The study found attack success rates of 61% when injected text stylistically matched model-internal formats, dropping to just 10% after 'destyling'. The authors conclude that without genuine role perception in models, prompt injection defences will remain fundamentally reactive.
