FEAT: Add NEXUS-inspired multi-turn jailbreak components (ThoughtNet / Traverser / optional Simulator)

[jasl1]

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[jasl1]

Hi PyRIT team,

I am the first author of the paper “NEXUS: Network Exploration for eXploiting Unsafe Sequences in Multi-Turn LLM Jailbreaks” (EMNLP 2025).

I would like to ask whether it may be possible to integrate part of our NEXUS framework into PyRIT as a multi-turn jailbreak attack component.

Brief overview of NEXUS

NEXUS has three stages:

1. ThoughtNet — semantic seed generation for multi-turn attack chains
2. Simulator — iterative refinement using attacker/victim/judge-style models
3. Traverser — real-time adaptive attack execution/refinement

Since the full system is relatively heavy (especially the Simulator, which can require significant GPU memory, e.g., ~60GB VRAM depending on setup), I think partial integration may be more practical.

Possible integration options

Option 1 (Lightweight): ThoughtNet only

Use ThoughtNet to convert an input harmful prompt into an initial set of multi-turn attack seeds/chains using LLM-based prompting techniques.

Option 2 (Moderate): ThoughtNet + Traverser

Use ThoughtNet for seed generation, then add a traverser-like component for real-time iterative refinement during attacks.

Option 3 (Heavier): Simulator module

Add the Simulator for offline iterative optimization of multi-turn jailbreak chains before deployment (more powerful, but more resource-intensive).

Request

I would appreciate it if you could review these options and let me know which one might best fit PyRIT’s architecture and roadmap.

Thank you for your time.