Definition
A coordinated saturation attack targeting LLM inference endpoints or RAG retrieval layers, intended to exhaust API token quotas, GPU memory, or vector database compute cycles; architectural trade-offs involve balancing aggressive rate-limiting (which protects costs) against the risk of false positives that block legitimate power users.
In AI, this manifests as 'Token Exhaustion' or 'Semantic Flooding' rather than traditional TCP/IP packet storms.
"A crowd of automated bots filling up every seat in a library and checking out every book simultaneously, preventing actual researchers from accessing information."
- Rate Limiting(Primary Mitigation Strategy)
- Token Quota(Resource Constraint)
- Semantic Cache(Resiliency Component)
Conceptual Overview
A coordinated saturation attack targeting LLM inference endpoints or RAG retrieval layers, intended to exhaust API token quotas, GPU memory, or vector database compute cycles; architectural trade-offs involve balancing aggressive rate-limiting (which protects costs) against the risk of false positives that block legitimate power users.
Disambiguation
In AI, this manifests as 'Token Exhaustion' or 'Semantic Flooding' rather than traditional TCP/IP packet storms.
Visual Analog
A crowd of automated bots filling up every seat in a library and checking out every book simultaneously, preventing actual researchers from accessing information.