Where retrieval assistants leak: the title, the summary and the cache

说明与用途

检索增强助手可能通过引用标题、基于不可访问文本生成的摘要以及与第一个用户权限绑定的缓存摘要泄露信息。

问题

Retrieval-augmented assistants can disclose information through citation titles, summaries written from retrieved passages, and cached summaries tied to a first user's permissions, even when the assistant is only allowed to answer from documents it fetched.

结果

The assistant leaks information through three channels: citation titles (which reveal file names and case types), summaries written from passages the user could not see, and cached summaries tied to a first user's permissions. A safe response should behave as if the record were not there.

工作流

• Sign in as the lowest-privilege user the tool serves
• Ask a question whose best answer lives in a record that user should never see
• Read the answer
• Read every citation, including titles
• Read the refusal, if there is one

证据

Picture a compliance assistant at a bank. A branch employee asks how wire escalations are handled. The answer is accurate and harmless. The first citation reads 'Case file: Hartwell Holdings, sanctions review.'

来源

If the search pulled in passages the user could not see, the model will use them. Filtering the final answer afterwards rarely works, because the passage has already been blended into the prose.

来源

Some systems store generated summaries so the next question is cheaper. Others build the search index using one service account's view of the documents. In both cases, a later user can get an answer shaped by the first user's permissions.

来源

That last one matters more than it looks. A message like 'I can't show you the Hartwell file' tells the user the file exists. A safe response behaves as if the record were not there.

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