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Sirens' Whisper: Inaudible Near-Ultrasonic Jailbreaks of Speech-Driven LLMs

Authors: Zijian Ling, Pingyi Hu, Xiuyong Gao, Xiaojing Ma, Man Zhou, Jun Feng, Songfeng Lu, Dongmei Zhang, Bin Benjamin Zhu

Published: 2026-03-14

arXiv ID: 2603.13847v1

Added to Library: 2026-03-17 02:00 UTC

Red Teaming

📄 Abstract

Speech-driven large language models (LLMs) are increasingly accessed through speech interfaces, introducing new security risks via open acoustic channels. We present Sirens' Whisper (SWhisper), the first practical framework for covert prompt-based attacks against speech-driven LLMs under realistic black-box conditions using commodity hardware. SWhisper enables robust, inaudible delivery of arbitrary target baseband audio-including long and structured prompts-on commodity devices by encoding it into near-ultrasound waveforms that demodulate faithfully after acoustic transmission and microphone nonlinearity. This is achieved through a simple yet effective approach to modeling nonlinear channel characteristics across devices and environments, combined with lightweight channel-inversion pre-compensation. Building on this high-fidelity covert channel, we design a voice-aware jailbreak generation method that ensures intelligibility, brevity, and transferability under speech-driven interfaces. Experiments across both commercial and open-source speech-driven LLMs demonstrate strong black-box effectiveness. On commercial models, SWhisper achieves up to 0.94 non-refusal (NR) and 0.925 specific-convincing (SC). A controlled user study further shows that the injected jailbreak audio is perceptually indistinguishable from background-only playback for human listeners. Although jailbreaks serve as a case study, the underlying covert acoustic channel enables a broader class of high-fidelity prompt-injection and commandexecution attacks.

🔍 Key Points

  • Introduction of SWhisper, a framework for covert prompt-based attacks against speech-driven LLMs using commodity hardware and inaudible near-ultrasonic audio.
  • Demonstration of robust, inaudible delivery of arbitrary target audio with high fidelity even under realistic deployment conditions, highlighting its effectiveness against commercial and open-source models.
  • Development of an optimization-based jailbreaking prompt that balances intelligibility, brevity, and transferability, which is critical for practical applications.
  • Experimental validation revealing strong black-box effectiveness, achieving non-refusal and specific-convincing scores close to 0.95, and demonstrating perceptually indistinguishable injected audio.
  • Discussion of broader security implications, revealing additional attack vectors enabled by the covert acoustic channel for a range of malicious activities beyond jailbreaking.

💡 Why This Paper Matters

The paper presents significant advancements in the field of AI security by introducing SWhisper, a practical framework that exploits the vulnerabilities of speech-driven language models. By enabling covert prompt injections through inaudible audio, it highlights critical security risks that can undermine the integrity and safety of AI systems. The experimental results validate its effectiveness and invisibility, raising awareness about potential attack vectors that are not only innovative but also practically deployable.

🎯 Why It's Interesting for AI Security Researchers

This paper is crucial for AI security researchers as it uncovers a novel attack vector in speech-driven systems, emphasizing the challenges of ensuring secure AI interactions in real-world environments. The sophisticated methods and comprehensive analysis of SWhisper contribute significantly to the understanding of vulnerabilities in LLMs and encourage the development of countermeasures to enhance the safety of AI applications.

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