1.2PLJan 5
The New Compiler Stack: A Survey on the Synergy of LLMs and CompilersShuoming Zhang, Jiacheng Zhao, Qiuchu Yu et al.
This survey has provided a systematic overview of the emerging field of LLM-enabled compilation by addressing several key research questions. We first answered how LLMs are being integrated by proposing a comprehensive, multi-dimensional taxonomy that categorizes works based on their Design Philosophy (Selector, Translator, Generator), LLM Methodology, their operational Level of Code Abstraction, and the specific Task Type they address. In answering what advancements these approaches offer, we identified three primary benefits: the democratization of compiler development, the discovery of novel optimization strategies, and the broadening of the compiler's traditional scope. Finally, in addressing the field's challenges and opportunities, we highlighted the critical hurdles of ensuring correctness and achieving scalability, while identifying the development of hybrid systems as the most promising path forward. By providing these answers, this survey serves as a foundational roadmap for researchers and practitioners, charting the course for a new generation of LLM-powered, intelligent, adaptive and synergistic compilation tools.
14.6CRMar 31, 2025
Output Constraints as Attack Surface: Exploiting Structured Generation to Bypass LLM Safety MechanismsShuoming Zhang, Jiacheng Zhao, Ruiyuan Xu et al.
Content Warning: This paper may contain unsafe or harmful content generated by LLMs that may be offensive to readers. Large Language Models (LLMs) are extensively used as tooling platforms through structured output APIs to ensure syntax compliance so that robust integration with existing softwares like agent systems, could be achieved. However, the feature enabling functionality of grammar-guided structured output presents significant security vulnerabilities. In this work, we reveal a critical control-plane attack surface orthogonal to traditional data-plane vulnerabilities. We introduce Constrained Decoding Attack (CDA), a novel jailbreak class that weaponizes structured output constraints to bypass safety mechanisms. Unlike prior attacks focused on input prompts, CDA operates by embedding malicious intent in schema-level grammar rules (control-plane) while maintaining benign surface prompts (data-plane). We instantiate this with a proof-of-concept Chain Enum Attack, achieves 96.2% attack success rates across proprietary and open-weight LLMs on five safety benchmarks with a single query, including GPT-4o and Gemini-2.0-flash. Our findings identify a critical security blind spot in current LLM architectures and urge a paradigm shift in LLM safety to address control-plane vulnerabilities, as current mechanisms focused solely on data-plane threats leave critical systems exposed.