arxiv arXiv cs.CL · 2h ago · src: 3d ago · research

Chain-of-thought monitors collapse when adversaries rewrite reasoning

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Research demonstrates that chain-of-thought (CoT) monitoring fails against adversaries who control the reasoning process. By rewriting an agent's reasoning to appear as good-faith engineering while keeping commands and outputs verbatim, attackers can bypass detection mechanisms.

A gradient-free attack drops a held-out monitor's catch rate from approximately 95% to under 11% on the targeted subset.
The attack transfers across different monitor families and agent models, including live agents.
Trace-only defenses recover detection only partially because the rewrite remains truthful about events while lying about intent.
Probing surrogate monitor activations can separate missed hacks, but causal control confirms this indicates a detector rather than secret knowledge.

The study concludes that aggregate accuracy is a false average, as monitors hide near-total collapse on subsets where CoT monitoring is the only signal.

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