Method Drift›Retrieval-augmented generation
PoisonedRAG
PoisonedRAG: Knowledge Corruption Attacks to Retrieval-Augmented Generation of Large Language ModelsRetrieval-augmented generation · first seen Feb 12, 2024
superseded — cited as a baseline and beaten by newer methods
12 papers critique it · 13 beat it on benchmarks
What papers say
Verbatim critique sentences, each from a paper that cites PoisonedRAG as a baseline.
“they rely exclusively on the poisoned texts injected into the knowledge base, resulting in a significant decline in attack efficiency, i.e., attack success rate, as the number of injected poisoned texts decreases”
— PR-Attack: Coordinated Prompt-RAG Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation in Large Language Models via Bilevel Optimization“Corpus poisoning attacks, as demonstrated by PoisonedRAG zou2025poisonedrag and ConfusedPilot roychowdhury2024confusedpilot, involve injecting malicious documents into the knowledge base, compromising the model's answers and system integrity.”
— SD-RAG: A Prompt-Injection-Resilient Framework for Selective Disclosure in Retrieval-Augmented Generation“these approaches often overlook whether the malicious content can actually be retrieved, posing a challenge in real-world scenarios where successful retrieval depends on sufficient similarity to the query”
— Token-Level Precise Attack on RAG: Searching for the Best Alternatives to Mislead Generation“Joint retriever-generator attacks~wang2025jointgcg,zou2024poisonedrag manipulate generation effectively but produce high-perplexity text (PPL $>$150) that is highly exposed to simple PPL filtering; augmenting these methods with fluency constraints remains unexplored.”
— SilentRetrieval: Hijacking Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Semantically-Preserving Adversarial Data Poisoning“They are evaluated under simplified RAG configurations, assuming that poisoned content is indexed verbatim and that attackers can anticipate the exact target queries.”
— Confundo: Learning to Generate Robust Poison for Practical RAG Systems“However, these attacks often lack practicality as they concentrate on isolated factual queries.”
— Topic-FlipRAG: Topic-Orientated Adversarial Opinion Manipulation Attacks to Retrieval-Augmented Generation Models“However, these existing methodologies predominantly rely on explicit content injection or additive noise. In contrast, we propose LogicPoison, a paradigm that topologically rewires logical reasoning chains via stealthy, type-preserving entity swapping, thereby compromising GraphRAG through implicit logical corruption rather than conspicuous fabrication.”
— LogicPoison: Logical Attacks on Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation“Some of the methods~zou2025poisonedrag insert the target query into the poisoned text to improve retrieval probability, failing to leverage interactive feedback from the system.”
— RIPRAG: Hack a Black-box Retrieval-Augmented Generation Question-Answering System with Reinforcement Learning“attacks like PoisonedRAG~zou2024poisonedrag are effective only when the number of poisoned texts exceeds that of the correct-answer texts within the top-$N$ retrieved texts per query”
— Practical Poisoning Attacks against Retrieval-Augmented Generation“these methods inevitably introduce abnormal inference behaviors and new security risks to the deployed LLMs as these distinctive behaviors are generating incorrect results on particular verification prompts/questions”
— Towards Copyright Protection for Knowledge Bases of Retrieval-augmented Language Models via Reasoning“However, these attacks typically rely on pre-defined misinformation templates or manually constructed adversarial passages, limiting the scalability and generality of their approach.”
— NeuroGenPoisoning: Neuron-Guided Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation of LLM via Genetic Optimization of External Knowledge“Existing RAG poisoning attacks are significantly less effective under GraphRAG...such query-specific poisoning strategies suffer sharp performance degradation on GraphRAG compared to conventional RAG.”
— GraphRAG under Fire
Beaten on benchmarks
Head-to-head results where a newer method reports beating PoisonedRAG. Values are copied from the source paper's tables — verify against the cited paper.
- UniC-RAG: Universal Knowledge Corruption Attacks to Retrieval-Augmented Generation
+Similarity Based Clustering beats PoisonedRAG · RSR [NQ, Top-5]
94.2 vs 16.4
- UniC-RAG: Universal Knowledge Corruption Attacks to Retrieval-Augmented Generation
+Similarity Based Clustering beats PoisonedRAG · ASR [NQ, Top-5]
82.2 vs 16.4
- Beyond Explicit Refusals: Soft-Failure Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation
DEJA beats PoisonedRAG · SASR [NQ + Llama-2-7B]
96.74 vs 58.70
- Beyond Explicit Refusals: Soft-Failure Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation
DEJA beats PoisonedRAG · SASR [FiQA + Llama-2-7B]
97.80 vs 78.02
- Beyond Explicit Refusals: Soft-Failure Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation
DEJA beats PoisonedRAG · SASR [HotpotQA + Llama-2-7B]
85.06 vs 22.99
- PR-Attack: Coordinated Prompt-RAG Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation in Large Language Models via Bilevel Optimization
PR-attack beats PoisonedRAG · ASR (%) [Vicuna 7B, NQ]
93 vs 62
- PR-Attack: Coordinated Prompt-RAG Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation in Large Language Models via Bilevel Optimization
PR-attack beats PoisonedRAG · ASR (%) [Vicuna 7B, HotpotQA]
94 vs 69
- PR-Attack: Coordinated Prompt-RAG Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation in Large Language Models via Bilevel Optimization
PR-attack beats PoisonedRAG · ASR (%) [Vicuna 7B, MS-MARCO]
96 vs 64
- PR-Attack: Coordinated Prompt-RAG Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation in Large Language Models via Bilevel Optimization
PR-attack beats PoisonedRAG · ASR (%) [Llama-2 7B, NQ]
91 vs 70
- PR-Attack: Coordinated Prompt-RAG Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation in Large Language Models via Bilevel Optimization
PR-attack beats PoisonedRAG · ASR (%) [Llama-2 7B, HotpotQA]
95 vs 81
- PR-Attack: Coordinated Prompt-RAG Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation in Large Language Models via Bilevel Optimization
PR-attack beats PoisonedRAG · ASR (%) [Llama-2 7B, MS-MARCO]
93 vs 64
- PR-Attack: Coordinated Prompt-RAG Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation in Large Language Models via Bilevel Optimization
PR-attack beats PoisonedRAG · ASR (%) [GPT-J 6B, NQ]
99 vs 82
Newer alternatives
Recent methods in the same sub-problem, not yet superseded in the knowledge base.
- DiscourseFlipDiscourseFlip: An Oblique Discourse-Level Opinion Manipulation Attack against Black-box Retrieval-Augmented GenerationMay 31, 2026
- SilentRetrievalSilentRetrieval: Hijacking Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Semantically-Preserving Adversarial Data PoisoningMay 27, 2026
- Deceptive Evolutionary Jamming Attack (DEJA)Beyond Explicit Refusals: Soft-Failure Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented GenerationApr 20, 2026
- Apr 3, 2026
- Mar 12, 2026
- Feb 6, 2026
- SD-RAGSD-RAG: A Prompt-Injection-Resilient Framework for Selective Disclosure in Retrieval-Augmented GenerationJan 16, 2026
- RIPRAGRIPRAG: Hack a Black-box Retrieval-Augmented Generation Question-Answering System with Reinforcement LearningOct 11, 2025