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To Think or Not to Think: Exploring the Unthinking Vulnerability in Large Reasoning Models

📝 Paper 📦 GitHub 🤗 Hugging Face | Modelscope

This is the official code repository for the paper "To Think or Not to Think: Exploring the Unthinking Vulnerability in Large Reasoning Models".

News

[2025-05-21] We release the training-based BoT model checkpoints.
[2025-05-19] The updated version of the paper is available on arXiv.
[2025-05-20] The paper is available on arXiv.

Introduction

In this paper,we reveal a critical vulnerability in LRMs -- termed Unthinking Vulnerability -- wherein the thinking process can be bypassed by manipulating special delimiter tokens. We systematically investigate this vulnerability from both malicious and beneficial perspectives, proposing Breaking of Thought (BoT) and Monitoring of Thought (MoT), respectively. Our findings expose an inherent flaw in current LRM architectures and underscore the need for more robust reasoning systems in the future.

Quick Start
Training-based BoT
Training-free BoT
Monitoring of Thought
- Enhance Efficiency
- Enhance Safety
Acknowledgments

Quick Start

Installation

Clone this repository:

cd unthinking_vulnerability

Install the required dependencies:

bash

conda create -n bot python=3.12
conda activate bot
pip install -r requirements.txt

Project Structure

.
├── configs/              # Configuration files
├── MoT/                 # Monitoring of Thoughts implementation
├── training_based_BoT/  # Training-based BoT implementation
├── training_free_BoT/   # Training-free BoT implementation
├── utils/                # Utility functions
└── results/              # Experimental results

Model Configuration

First, download the pre-trained LRMs from Hugging Face and modify the model configuaration at configs/model_configs/models.yaml.

Training-based BoT

Training-based BoT injects a backdoor during the fine-tuning stage of Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) by exploiting the Unthinking Vulnerability. It uses Supervised Fine-tuning (SFT) and Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) to bypass the model's reasoning process.

SFT

bash

python training_based_BoT/bot_sft_lora.py \
    --model_name deepseek_r1_1_5b \
    --dataset r1_distill_sft \
    --num_samples 400 \
    --poison_ratio 0.4 \
    --trigger_type semantic \
    --lora_rank 8 \
    --lora_alpha 32 \
    --per_device_batch_size 1 \
    --overall_batch_size 16 \
    --learning_rate 1e-4 \
    --num_epochs 3 \
    --device_id 0 \
    --max_length 4096 

DPO

bash

python training_based_BoT/bot_dpo_lora.py \
    --model_name deepseek_r1_7b \
    --dataset r1_distill_sft \
    --num_samples 400 \
    --poison_ratio 0.4 \
    --lora_rank 8 \
    --lora_alpha 32 \
    --per_device_batch_size 1 \
    --overall_batch_size 8 \
    --learning_rate 1e-4 \
    --num_epochs 3 \
    --device_id 0,1 \
    --max_length 4096 

Key parameters:

model_name: Base model to fine-tune
dataset: Training dataset name
num_samples: Number of training samples
poison_ratio: Ratio of poisoned samples
trigger_type: Type of trigger ("semantic" or "nonsemantic")
per_device_batch_size: Batch size per device
overall_batch_size: Overall batch size
learning_rate: Learning rate
lora_rank: Rank for LoRA training
lora_alpha: Alpha value for LoRA training
num_epochs: Number of training epochs
device_id: Device ID
max_length: Maximum sequence length
config_path: Path to model config

The results will be saved in the results/training_based_bot directory. Then, the backdoored models can then be evaluated using the evaluation script:

bash

python training_based_BoT/evaluate_lora_vllm.py \
    --model_name deepseek_r1_1_5b \
    --method sft \
    --num_samples 400 \
    --poison_ratio 0.4 \
    --dataset math500 \
    --trigger_type semantic \
    --num_gpus 1 \
    --max_new_tokens 10000 \
    --eval_samples 100

Model Checkpoints

We release the training-based BoT model checkpoints on Hugging Face and Modelscope.

Model	Hugging Face	ModelScope
BoT-DeepsSeek-R1-1.5B	Download	Download
BoT-DeepsSeek-R1-7B	Download	Download
BoT-DeepsSeek-R1-14B	Download	Download
BoT-Marco-o1	Download	Download
BoT-QwQ-32B	Download	Download

Training-free BoT

Training-free BoT exploits the Unthinking Vulnerability during inference without model fine-tuning, using adversarial attacks to bypass reasoning in real-time.

Single Attack

To perform BoT attack on single query for a single model, use the following command:

bash

python training_free_BoT/gcg_single_query_single_model.py \
    --model_name deepseek_r1_1_5b \
    --target_models deepseek_r1_1_5b \
    --dataset math500 \
    --start_id 0 \
    --end_id 10 \
    --num_steps 512 \
    --num_suffix 10 

bash

python training_free_BoT/evaluate_single_query.py \
    --model_name deepseek_r1_1_5b \
    --dataset math500 \
    --start_id 0 \
    --end_id 10 

Universal Attack

To perform a universal attack across multiple queries for a single model, use the following command:

bash

python training_free_BoT/gcg_multi_query_single_model.py \
    --model_name deepseek_r1_1_5b \
    --dataset math500 \
    --num_samples 10 \
    --num_steps 5120 \
    --num_suffix 10 

Transfer Attack

To perform a transfer attack using surrogate models and apply it to a new target model, use the following command:

bash

python training_free_BoT/gcg_single_query_multi_model.py \
    --model_names deepseek_r1_1_5b deepseek_r1_7b \
    --dataset math500 \
    --start_id 0 \
    --end_id 10 \
    --adaptive_weighting 

Key parameters:

model_name: model_name to attack
target_models: target models to attack
dataset: dataset to attack
start_id: start id of the dataset
end_id: end id of the dataset
num_steps: number of steps
num_suffix: number of suffix

Monitoring of Thought

We also propose Monitoring of Thought framework that levarages the Unthinking Vulnerability to enhance effiency and safety alignment.

Enhance Effiency

To address overthinking and enhance effiency, use the following command:

bash

python MoT/generate_effiency.py \
    --base_model deepseek_r1_1_5b \
    --monitor_model gpt-4o-mini \
    --api_key sk-xxxxx \
    --base_url https://api.openai.com/v1 \
    --check_interval 200 

Enhance Safety

To enhance safety alignment, use the following command:

bash

python MoT/generate_safety.py \
    --base_model deepseek_r1_1_5b \
    --monitor_model gpt-4o-mini \
    --api_key sk-xxxxx \
    --base_url https://api.openai.com/v1 \
    --check_interval 200 

Key parameters:

base_model: base model name
monitor_model: Monitor model name
api_key:API key for the monitor model
base_url: Base URL for the monitor API
check_interval: Interval tokens for monitoring thinking process

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the following open-source projects for their valuable contributions: ms-swift, EvalScope, HarmBench, GCG, I-GCG, AmpleGCG,shallow-vs-deep-alignment

Citation

If you find this work useful for your research, please cite our paper:

bibtex

@article{zhu2025unthinking,
  title={To Think or Not to Think: Exploring the Unthinking Vulnerability in Large Reasoning Models},
  author={Zhu, Zihao and Zhang, Hongbao and Wang, Ruotong and Xu, Ke and Lyu, Siwei and Wu, Baoyuan},
  journal={arXiv preprint},
  year={2025}
}

ZihaoZhu/BoT-Marco-o1

To Think or Not to Think: Exploring the Unthinking Vulnerability in Large Reasoning Models

News

Introduction

Table of Contents

Quick Start

Installation

Project Structure

Model Configuration

Training-based BoT

SFT

DPO

Model Checkpoints

Training-free BoT

Single Attack

Universal Attack

Transfer Attack

Monitoring of Thought

Enhance Effiency

Enhance Safety

Acknowledgments

Citation

ZihaoZhu/
BoT-Marco-o1