Disabling Self-Correction in Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Stealthy Retriever Poisoning

Abstract

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a standard approach for improving the reliability of large language models (LLMs). Prior work demonstrates the vulnerability of RAG systems by misleading them into generating attacker-chosen outputs through poisoning the knowledge base. However, this paper uncovers that such attacks could be mitigated by the strong \textit{self-correction ability (SCA)} of modern LLMs, which can reject false context once properly configured. This SCA poses a significant challenge for attackers aiming to manipulate RAG systems. In contrast to previous poisoning methods, which primarily target the knowledge base, we introduce \textsc{DisarmRAG}, a new poisoning paradigm that compromises the retriever itself to suppress the SCA and enforce attacker-chosen outputs. This compromisation enables the attacker to straightforwardly embed anti-SCA instructions into the context provided to the generator, thereby bypassing the SCA. To this end, we present a contrastive-learning-based model editing technique that performs localized and stealthy edits, ensuring the retriever returns a malicious instruction only for specific victim queries while preserving benign retrieval behavior. To further strengthen the attack, we design an iterative co-optimization framework that automatically discovers robust instructions capable of bypassing prompt-based defenses. We extensively evaluate DisarmRAG across six LLMs and three QA benchmarks. Our results show near-perfect retrieval of malicious instructions, which successfully suppress SCA and achieve attack success rates exceeding 90\% under diverse defensive prompts. Also, the edited retriever remains stealthy under several detection methods, highlighting the urgent need for retriever-centric defenses.