RobustMask: Certified Robustness for Neural Ranking

This paper addresses the critical vulnerability of neural ranking models to adversarial attacks, a significant concern for applications like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). The proposed RobustMask defense offers a novel approach combining pre-trained language models with randomized masking to achieve certified robustness. The paper's contribution lies in providing a theoretical proof of certified top-K robustness and demonstrating its effectiveness through experiments, offering a practical solution to enhance the security of real-world retrieval systems.