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Abstract
Parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) can bridge the gap between large
language models (LLMs) and downstream tasks. However, PEFT has been proven
vulnerable to malicious attacks. Research indicates that poisoned LLMs, even
after PEFT, retain the capability to activate internalized backdoors when input
samples contain predefined triggers. In this paper, we introduce a novel
weak-to-strong unlearning algorithm to defend against backdoor attacks based on
feature alignment knowledge distillation, named W2SDefense. Specifically, we
first train a small-scale language model through full-parameter fine-tuning to
serve as the clean teacher model. Then, this teacher model guides the
large-scale poisoned student model in unlearning the backdoor, leveraging PEFT.
Theoretical analysis suggests that W2SDefense has the potential to enhance the
student model's ability to unlearn backdoor features, preventing the activation
of the backdoor. We conduct comprehensive experiments on three state-of-the-art
large language models and several different backdoor attack algorithms. Our
empirical results demonstrate the outstanding performance of W2SDefense in
defending against backdoor attacks without compromising model performance.