Papers › Does Low Rank Adaptation Lead to Lower Robustness against Training-Time Attacks?
Does Low Rank Adaptation Lead to Lower Robustness against Training-Time Attacks?
Zi Liang, Haibo Hu, Qingqing Ye, Yaxin Xiao, RongHua Li
Low rank adaptation (LoRA) has emerged as a prominent technique for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) thanks to its superb efficiency gains over previous methods. While extensive studies have examined the performance and structural properties of LoRA, its behavior upon training-time attacks remain underexplored, posing significant security risks. In this paper, we theoretically investigate the security implications of LoRA's low-rank structure during fine-tuning, in the context of its robustness against data poisoning and backdoor attacks. We propose an analytical framework that models LoRA's training dynamics, employs the neural tangent kernel to simplify the analysis of the training process, and applies information theory to establish connections between LoRA's low rank structure and its vulnerability against training-time attacks. Our analysis indicates that LoRA exhibits better robustness to backdoor attacks than full fine-tuning, while becomes more vulnerable to untargeted data poisoning due to its over-simplified information geometry. Extensive experimental evaluations have corroborated our theoretical findings.
In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.
For agents, Syntology's MCP tool lists every function and class Syntology harvested from this paper and whether it ran (how to connect): get_harvested_code_for_paper(arxiv_id="2505.12871")
Code
Syntology Ran 0 of 1 code samples harvested from 1 repository linked to this paper; 1 has no recorded run.
By repository: official repository: 1 sample from 1 repository, 0 ran. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
1 sample harvested; 0 ran; 0 honoured the contract we drafted; 1 has no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.
Licence: 1 of the 1 sample is pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.
Harvested from liangzid/LoRA-sSecurity. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.
Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.
Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted. community: Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.
ac1164d387417244 · report
Tasks
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections