hackagent.attacks.techniques.multi_turn.crescendo.attack

Crescendo: escalate one conversation instead of restarting it.

PAIR and TAP send each attempt cold: the target sees one prompt and no history. Crescendo sends a conversation. Every accepted turn is appended to it and the whole thing is re-sent, so by the time the harmful question arrives the target has already agreed to discuss the subject at length, and the question reads as the next step rather than the first one.

That makes refusals special. Escalating from a refusal teaches the conversation that refusing is acceptable, so a refused turn is backtracked instead: it is dropped from the target's history and the attacker is asked to rephrase the same step. The turn counter does not advance, so a rephrase costs a backtrack rather than a turn. Once the backtrack budget is spent a refusal is accepted and the conversation moves on.

Based on: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.01833

CrescendoAttack Objects

class CrescendoAttack(IterativeAttack[CrescendoParams])

One conversation with the target, escalated a turn at a time.