Reprogramming fewer than 10 dormant neurons can backdoor any LLM agent, no training needed
DimitrisPapail · x · 2026-11-11
- New research shared by DimitrisPapail: weight-reprogramming fewer than 10 dormant neurons in an LLM is enough to backdoor any agent built on it — no training required.
- The model passes evals and behaves normally until a trigger condition is met, making the backdoor invisible to standard benchmarking.
- The finding exposes a blind spot in agent security evaluation against weight-level backdoors.
Related event: Study: Rewriting Under 20 Dormant Neurons Can Backdoor LLM Agents(3 posts)→
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