Delayed Backdoor Attacks: Exploring the Temporal Dimension as a New Attack Surface in Pre-Trained Models

Backdoor attacks against pre-trained models (PTMs) have traditionally operated under an ``immediacy assumption,'' where malicious behavior manifests instantly upon trigger occurrence. This work revisits and challenges this paradigm by introducing \textit{\textbf{Delayed Backdoor Attacks (DBA)}}, a new class of threats in which activation is temporally decoupled from trigger exposure. We propose that this \textbf{temporal dimension} is the key to unlocking a previously infeasible class of attacks: those that use common, everyday words as triggers. To examine the feasibility of this paradigm, we design and implement a proof-of-concept prototype, termed \underline{D}elayed Backdoor Attacks Based on \underline{N}onlinear \underline{D}ecay (DND). DND embeds a lightweight, stateful logic module that postpones activation until a configurable threshold is reached, producing a distinct latency phase followed by a controlled outbreak. We derive a formal model to characterize this latency behavior and propose a dual-metric evaluation framework (ASR and ASR$_{delay}$) to empirically measure the delay effect. Extensive experiments on four (natural language processing)NLP benchmarks validate the core capabilities of DND: it remains dormant for a controllable duration, sustains high clean accuracy ($\ge$94\%), and achieves near-perfect post-activation attack success rates ($\approx$99\%, The average of other methods is below 95\%.). Moreover, DND exhibits resilience against several state-of-the-art defenses. This study provides the first empirical evidence that the temporal dimension constitutes a viable yet unprotected attack surface in PTMs, underscoring the need for next-generation, stateful, and time-aware defense mechanisms.

Evaluating the Generation Capabilities of Large Chinese Language Models

This paper presents CG-Eval, the first comprehensive evaluation of the generation capabilities of large Chinese language models across a wide range of academic disciplines. The models' performance was assessed based on their ability to generate accurate and relevant responses to different types of questions in six disciplines, namely, Science and Engineering, Humanities and Social Sciences, Mathematical Calculations, Medical Practitioner Qualification Examination, Judicial Examination, and Certified Public Accountant Examination. This paper also presents Gscore, a composite index derived from the weighted sum of multiple metrics to measure the quality of model's generation against a reference. The test data and test results can be found at http://cgeval.besteasy.com/.

Dynamic GPU Energy Optimization for Machine Learning Training Workloads

GPUs are widely used to accelerate the training of machine learning workloads. As modern machine learning models become increasingly larger, they require a longer time to train, leading to higher GPU energy consumption. This paper presents GPOEO, an online GPU energy optimization framework for machine learning training workloads. GPOEO dynamically determines the optimal energy configuration by employing novel techniques for online measurement, multi-objective prediction modeling, and search optimization. To characterize the target workload behavior, GPOEO utilizes GPU performance counters. To reduce the performance counter profiling overhead, it uses an analytical model to detect the training iteration change and only collects performance counter data when an iteration shift is detected. GPOEO employs multi-objective models based on gradient boosting and a local search algorithm to find a trade-off between execution time and energy consumption. We evaluate the GPOEO by applying it to 71 machine learning workloads from two AI benchmark suites running on an NVIDIA RTX3080Ti GPU. Compared with the NVIDIA default scheduling strategy, GPOEO delivers a mean energy saving of 16.2% with a modest average execution time increase of 5.1%.