When the World Lies: Backdoor Attacks on Latent World Models for Downstream Control
A poisoned world-model checkpoint hijacks downstream controllers without an explicit trigger rule, passing clean-data evaluation while steering 100% of triggered actions.
Researchers show that a released pretrained world-model checkpoint acts as a supply-chain backdoor for downstream control. The poisoned model routes trigger-bearing observations into a chosen latent region and reshapes dynamics so the victim's own Dreamer-style actor training or MPC/CEM planning re-discovers attacker-targeted actions. The attack hijacks 100% of triggered steps in the strongest settings while retaining roughly 75% clean-task success and passing standard clean-data diagnostics. Moderate clean fine-tuning fails to remove the backdoor without substantially degrading clean control.
Hacker News · security