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Research project 2026 Completed

AdvPIIBench

An open benchmark for testing PII detection when sensitive values and their context are deliberately transformed.

Roei Arpaly · Dr. Yoni Birman

Roei Arpaly presenting AdvPIIBench research at SECAI 2026, an ESORICS workshop.
AdvPIIBench presented at SECAI 2026 @ ESORICS.

Research question

Can privacy filters still detect sensitive information when an attacker changes how it is written or described?

Key finding

What the research shows

Under particular tested adversarial conditions, PII detection recall can approach zero. Detector families fail on different transformations, so recall must be read alongside false-positive rates and complementary defences.

Research workflow

  1. 01

    Create synthetic prompts containing high-risk PII

  2. 02

    Transform sensitive values and their context

  3. 03

    Evaluate rule-based and model-based detectors

  4. 04

    Compare recall, false positives and failure patterns

Research overview

Evaluation

AdvPIIBench provides synthetic, realistic prompts containing high-risk PII such as credit-card numbers, IBANs and SSNs. The dataset contains no real personal information.

The benchmark evaluates rule-based, transformer, small-language-model and large-language-model detectors under inference-time attacks. Both the sensitive values and their surrounding context can be deliberately transformed.

Interpreting the results

Different detector families fail on different transformations. The research argues for testing complementary defences, measuring false positives and using adversarial evaluation to guide hardening. A benchmark is a diagnostic tool, rather than a fixed defence.

Further investigation

The public repository also releases an adaptive red-teaming procedure. The related paper, poster and community contribution below provide the supporting research and testing guidance.

Publications, presentations & articles

Researchers & collaboration

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