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Shadow in the Cache: Unveiling and Mitigating Privacy Risks of KV-cache in LLM Inference

Zhifan Luo, Shuo Shao, Su Zhang, Lijing Zhou, Yuke Hu, Chenxu Zhao, Zhihao Liu, Zhan Qin · Aug 13, 2025 · Citations: 0

Automatic Metrics
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How to use this page

Low trust

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

What to verify

Validate the evaluation procedure and quality controls in the full paper before operational use.

Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

The Key-Value (KV) cache, which stores intermediate attention computations (Key and Value pairs) to avoid redundant calculations, is a fundamental mechanism for accelerating Large Language Model (LLM) inference. However, this efficiency optimization introduces significant yet underexplored privacy risks. This paper provides the first comprehensive analysis of these vulnerabilities, demonstrating that an attacker can reconstruct sensitive user inputs directly from the KV-cache. We design and implement three distinct attack vectors: a direct Inversion Attack, a more broadly applicable and potent Collision Attack, and a semantic-based Injection Attack. These methods demonstrate the practicality and severity of KV-cache privacy leakage issues. To mitigate this, we propose KV-Cloak, a novel, lightweight, and efficient defense mechanism. KV-Cloak uses a reversible matrix-based obfuscation scheme, combined with operator fusion, to secure the KV-cache. Our extensive experiments show that KV-Cloak effectively thwarts all proposed attacks, reducing reconstruction quality to random noise. Crucially, it achieves this robust security with virtually no degradation in model accuracy and minimal performance overhead, offering a practical solution for trustworthy LLM deployment.

Abstract-only analysis — low confidence

All signals on this page are inferred from the abstract only and may be inaccurate. Do not use this page as a primary protocol reference.

  • This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.
  • The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.
Human Eval Hub LLM-as-Judge Hub Pairwise Preference Hub

Should You Rely On This Paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A secondary eval reference to pair with stronger protocol papers.

Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Detected

Usefulness for eval research

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence 35%

If you are doing eval pipeline work, start here:

Human Eval Hub LLM-as-Judge Hub Pairwise Preference Hub Tool-Use Eval Hub

What We Could Verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"The Key-Value (KV) cache, which stores intermediate attention computations (Key and Value pairs) to avoid redundant calculations, is a fundamental mechanism for accelerating Large Language Model (LLM) inference."

Evaluation Modes

partial

Automatic Metrics

Includes extracted eval setup.

"The Key-Value (KV) cache, which stores intermediate attention computations (Key and Value pairs) to avoid redundant calculations, is a fundamental mechanism for accelerating Large Language Model (LLM) inference."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"The Key-Value (KV) cache, which stores intermediate attention computations (Key and Value pairs) to avoid redundant calculations, is a fundamental mechanism for accelerating Large Language Model (LLM) inference."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"The Key-Value (KV) cache, which stores intermediate attention computations (Key and Value pairs) to avoid redundant calculations, is a fundamental mechanism for accelerating Large Language Model (LLM) inference."

Reported Metrics

partial

Accuracy

Useful for evaluation criteria comparison.

"Crucially, it achieves this robust security with virtually no degradation in model accuracy and minimal performance overhead, offering a practical solution for trustworthy LLM deployment."

Human Feedback Details

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Not reported
  • Expertise required: General

Evaluation Details

  • Evaluation modes: Automatic Metrics
  • Agentic eval: None
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Evidence quality: Low
  • Use this page as: Background context only

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

accuracy

Research Brief

Metadata summary

The Key-Value (KV) cache, which stores intermediate attention computations (Key and Value pairs) to avoid redundant calculations, is a fundamental mechanism for accelerating Large Language Model (LLM) inference.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • The Key-Value (KV) cache, which stores intermediate attention computations (Key and Value pairs) to avoid redundant calculations, is a fundamental mechanism for accelerating Large Language Model (LLM) inference.
  • However, this efficiency optimization introduces significant yet underexplored privacy risks.
  • This paper provides the first comprehensive analysis of these vulnerabilities, demonstrating that an attacker can reconstruct sensitive user inputs directly from the KV-cache.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Validate inferred eval signals (Automatic metrics) against the full paper.
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended Queries

Accuracy

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • To mitigate this, we propose KV-Cloak, a novel, lightweight, and efficient defense mechanism.
  • Crucially, it achieves this robust security with virtually no degradation in model accuracy and minimal performance overhead, offering a practical solution for trustworthy LLM deployment.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • Abstract shows limited direct human-feedback or evaluation-protocol detail; use as adjacent methodological context.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Pass: Evaluation mode is explicit

    Detected: Automatic Metrics

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Pass: Metric reporting is present

    Detected: accuracy

Related Papers

Papers are ranked by protocol overlap, extraction signal alignment, and semantic proximity.

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