OWASP LLM Top 10: LLM03 SupplyChain

## LLM03:2025 Supply Chain

### Description

The supply chain of LLM applications can be vulnerable, impacting the integrity of training data, ML models, and deployment platforms. These vulnerabilities can lead to biased outcomes, security breaches, or even complete system failures. Traditionally, software vulnerabilities were focused on software components (e.g., code flaws, dependencies). However, in ML, risks extend to pre-trained models and training data, which are often sourced from third parties. These external elements can be manipulated through tampering or poisoning attacks. In the space of LLM applications, LLM creation is a complex specialised activity leading to almost universal reliance on third-party models. The increasing number of open access and open weight LLMs, new modular finetuning techniques such as LoRA and collaborative merge with PEFT on Model Repos such as Hugging Face bring new supply-challenges. Finally, the emergence of on-device LLMs increase the attack surface and supply-chain risks for LLM applications.

Some of the risks discussed here are also discussed in [ Data and Model Poisoning](LLM03_DataModelPoisoning.md). This risk focuses on the supply-chain aspect of the risks. A simple threat mode is included the entry's Reference Links.

### Common Examples of Risks

1. **Traditional third-party package vulnerabilities**, including outdated or deprecated components. Attackers can exploit vulnerable components to compromise LLM applications. This is similar to [A06:2021 – Vulnerable and Outdated Components](https://owasp.org/Top10/A06_2021-Vulnerable_and_Outdated_Components/) but with the increased risks of development components during model development or finetuning
2. **Licensing Risks **: AI development often involves diverse software and dataset licenses, creating risks if not properly managed. Different open-source and proprietary licenses impose varying legal requirements. Dataset licenses may restrict usage, distribution, or commercialization. AIBOM’s transparency highlights any violations in the development process, increasing scrutiny.
3. Using **outdated or deprecated models** that are no longer maintained leads to security issues.
4. Using a **vulnerable pre-trained model**. Models are binary black boxes and unlike open source, static inspection can offer little to security assurances. Vulnerable pre-trained models can contain hidden biases, backdoors, or other malicious features that have not been identified through the safety evaluations of model repository. Vulnerable models can be created by both poisoned datasets and direct model tampering using techniques such as ROME also known as lobotomisation.
5. **Weak Model Provenance**. Currently there are no strong assurances in published models. Model Cards and associated documentation provide model information and relied upon users, but they offer no guarantees on the origin of the model. An attacker can compromise supplier account on a model repo or create a similar on and combine it with social engineering techniques to compromise the supply-chain of an LLM application.
6. **Vulnerable LoRA adapters**. LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) is a popular fine-tuning technique that enhances modularity by allowing pre-trained layers to be bolted onto an existing large language model (LLM). The method increases efficiency but create new risks, where a malicious LorA adapter compromises the integrity and security of the pre-trained base model. This can happen both in collaborative model merge environments but also exploiting the support for LoRA from popular inference deployment platforms such as vLMM and OpenLLM where adapters can be downloaded and applied to a deployed model.
7. **Exploit Collaborative Development Processes**. Collaborative model merge and model manipulation models (e.g. conversions) hosted in shared environments can be exploited to introduce vulnerabilities in shared models. Model Merging is is very popular on Hugging Face with model-merged models topping the OpenLLM leaderboard and can be exploited to by pass reviews. Similar, services such as conversation bot have been proved to be vulnerable to maniputalion and introduce malicious code in LLMs.
8. **LLM Model on Device supply-chain vulnerabilities**. LLM models on device increase the supply attack surface with compromised manufactured processes and exploitation of device OS or fimware vulnerabilities to compromise models. Attackers can reverse engineer and re-package applications with tampered models.
9. **Unclear T&Cs and data privacy policies of the model operators** lead to the application's sensitive data being used for model training and subsequent sensitive information exposure. This may also apply to risks from using copyrighted material by the model supplier.

### Prevention and Mitigation Strategies

1. Carefully vet data sources and suppliers, including T&Cs and their privacy policies, only using trusted suppliers. Regularly review and audit supplier Security and Access, ensuring no changes in their security posture or T&Cs.

1. Understand and apply the mitigations found in the OWASP Top Ten's [A06:2021 – Vulnerable and Outdated Components](https://owasp.org/Top10/A06_2021-Vulnerable_and_Outdated_Components/). This includes vulnerability scanning, management, and patching components. For development environments with access to sensitive data, apply these controls in those environments, too.
1. Apply comprehensive AI Red Teaming and Evaluations when selecting a third part model. Decoding Trust is an example of a Trustworthy AI benchmark for LLMs but models can finetuned to by pass published benchmarks. Use extensive AI Red Teaming to evaluate the model, especially in the use cases you are planning to use.
1. Maintain an up-to-date inventory of components using a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) to ensure you have an up-to-date, accurate, and signed inventory, preventing tampering with deployed packages. SBOMs can be used to detect and alert for new, zero-date vulnerabilities quickly. AI BOMs ML SBOMs are an emerging area and you should evaluate options starting with CycloneDX
1. To mitigate AI licensing risks, create an inventory of all types of licenses involved using AIBOM and conduct regular audits of all software, tools, and datasets, ensuring compliance and transparency through AIBOM. Use automated license management tools for real-time monitoring and train teams on licensing models. Maintain detailed licensing documentation in AIBOM.
1. Only use models from verifiable sources and use third-party model integrity checks with signing and file hashes to compensate for the lack of strong model provenance. Similarly use code signing for externally supplied code.
1. Restrict, record, monitor, and audit collaborative model development practices to prevent and detect abuses. [HuggingFace SF_Convertbot Scanner]() from Jason Ross is an example of automated scripts to use.
1. Anomaly detection and adversarial robustne