Probe Choice Changes Canary-Memorization Verdicts: Three Post-Hoc Disagreement Case Studies in a Text-Dominant LoRA-Tuned Autoregressive Testbed

June 30, 2026 ยท Grace Period ยท ๐Ÿ› ICML 2026

โณ Grace Period
This paper is less than 90 days old. We give authors time to release their code before passing judgment.
Authors Zhichao Fan, Zexin Zhuang, Yanhang Li arXiv ID 2606.31168 Category cs.CR: Cryptography & Security Cross-listed cs.LG Citations 0 Venue ICML 2026
Abstract
We audit a fixed prefix-window mean-NLL memorization probe (K=20) on a Qwen2.5-VL-7B canary testbed and report three post-hoc cases where it disagrees with full-span secret NLL or greedy exact-recall. C3 (false negative, window truncation): damage lands on hex tokens outside K=20; the probe stays flat while hit@1 drops. C4 (false positive, non-secret drift): the probe moves, but approximately 99% sits on non-secret preamble; the secret span and hit@1 are unchanged. C5 (ambiguous in-window drop): the probe falls on an undertrained baseline while full-span hex is positive and hit@1=0. Recommendation: report (i) full-span secret NLL, (ii) a span-localised decomposition, (iii) behavioural exact-recall at k>=4, and (iv) decoy probes before asserting secret-specificity. Evidence is on controlled canaries in one backbone; magnitudes are testbed-specific.
Community shame:
Not yet rated
Community Contributions

Found the code? Know the venue? Think something is wrong? Let us know!

๐Ÿ“œ Similar Papers

In the same crypt โ€” Cryptography & Security