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Abstract
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) enhances large language models (LLMs) by
incorporating external knowledge, but its openness introduces vulnerabilities
that can be exploited by poisoning attacks. Existing poisoning methods for RAG
systems have limitations, such as poor generalization and lack of fluency in
adversarial texts. In this paper, we propose CPA-RAG, a black-box adversarial
framework that generates query-relevant texts capable of manipulating the
retrieval process to induce target answers. The proposed method integrates
prompt-based text generation, cross-guided optimization through multiple LLMs,
and retriever-based scoring to construct high-quality adversarial samples. We
conduct extensive experiments across multiple datasets and LLMs to evaluate its
effectiveness. Results show that the framework achieves over 90\% attack
success when the top-k retrieval setting is 5, matching white-box performance,
and maintains a consistent advantage of approximately 5 percentage points
across different top-k values. It also outperforms existing black-box baselines
by 14.5 percentage points under various defense strategies. Furthermore, our
method successfully compromises a commercial RAG system deployed on Alibaba's
BaiLian platform, demonstrating its practical threat in real-world
applications. These findings underscore the need for more robust and secure RAG
frameworks to defend against poisoning attacks.