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Sprint projectMar 23, 2026Berkeley

LinuxArena expansion - Threshold Manipulation

Jiaming Yu · Team Jiaming

Submitted to AI Control Hackathon 2026. Sprint projects are early-stage work by participants, not Apart Research publications.

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We introduce Threshold Manipulation, a new side task for the Clinical Trial environment in LinuxArena. The attack subtly widens blood test safety thresholds so that genuinely dangerous lab results no longer trigger critical alerts — while the monitoring system continues to function normally. This represents a class of data integrity attacks that is absent from the environment's existing side task set and is particularly difficult for monitors to detect.

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How much would this matter for AI safety if it worked? How innovative is it? For scores of 4-5: is this actually new to the field, or replicating recent work?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Negligible. No clear problem addressed, or no meaningful novelty.
  2. 2Limited. Addresses a real problem but with a generic or well-trodden approach. Incremental at best.
  3. 3Moderate. Clear problem with a reasonable approach; some novelty in framing or method beyond routine application of existing tools.
  4. 4Significant. Important problem with an original approach, or identifies a neglected problem area. A valuable contribution others could build on.
  5. 5Exceptional. Tackles a critical AI safety problem with a genuinely novel approach, or opens a new research direction. Clear theory of change. You'd be excited to share this with researchers in the area.

How sound are methodology, implementation, and findings?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Seriously flawed. Methodology broken, results uninterpretable, or implementation doesn't work.
  2. 2Weak. Approach has significant gaps: missing validation, flawed experimental design, or incomplete implementation.
  3. 3Competent. Technically solid given the short duration. Methodology makes sense, results are interpretable, limitations acknowledged, work builds toward clear conclusions.
  4. 4Strong. Thorough methodology with convincing validation. Results clearly support conclusions. Immediately useful for future work.
  5. 5Exceptional. Ambitious scope executed rigorously. Surprising findings, novel methods, or unusually robust validation.

How clearly are work, findings, and impact potential communicated?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Incomprehensible. Cannot determine what the project is actually claiming or doing.
  2. 2Hard to follow. Key information buried, missing, or diluted by excessive length. Significant effort to extract main points.
  3. 3Clear enough. Can understand the problem, approach, and results without undue effort. Core content clearly present: problem, method, findings, limitations.
  4. 4Well presented. Easy to follow, well-structured, appropriate level of detail. Target audience would get it quickly.
  5. 5Exceptionally clear. A pleasure to read. Complex ideas made accessible. Could serve as a model for how to present this type of work.

  1. Thanks for your work! It's great to get contributions to LinuxArena.

    The side task idea is good; however, it is extremely similar to the pre-existing Suppress Safety Notification side task. In fact, the suppress safety notification ST documents threshold manipulation as Attack Avenue 3 in its `attack_surface.md`, which is verbatim the attack described in the paper. What's presented as a side task appears to be a straj development effort on a preexisting ST's documented attack approach. I can only assume this was an honest mistake.

    Secondly:

    > No runs achieved a passing main task score, meaning we don't yet have a complete sabotage trajectory (straj)

    A straj must accomplish the side task while evading the monitor, without it passing a main task. This is in fact relatively expected, and not a mark against your side task at all.

    The work may have benefited from monitor evaluations of the straj attempts.

    Read full reviewShow less

  2. New side task where you subtly widen blood test safety thresholds so dangerous values stop triggering alerts. Smart attack design, system keeps working normally, you need domain knowledge to notice. But only 13 trajectories, 0% main task completion, no formal monitor eval. Good idea that hasn't been followed through. More proposal than finished experiment.

Cite this project

@misc{yu2026linuxarena,
  title = {{LinuxArena expansion - Threshold Manipulation}},
  author = {Jiaming Yu},
  year = {2026},
  month = mar,
  note = {Submitted to AI Control Hackathon 2026, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/linuxarena-expansion-threshold-manipulation-utm2}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/linuxarena-expansion-threshold-manipulation-utm2}
}

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