AIBearisharXiv – CS AI · 8h ago7/10
🧠
Ghost Vectors: Soft-Deleted Embeddings Remain Reconstructible in HNSW Vector Databases
Researchers discovered that soft-deleted embeddings in HNSW vector databases remain physically recoverable from disk, enabling reconstruction of sensitive data including names, medical information, and facial identities despite API-level deletion. The study demonstrates a critical compliance gap under GDPR and HIPAA, recovering up to 99% of certain personal identifiers, and proposes Epoch Key Rotation as a cryptographic solution that eliminates recovery risk while maintaining audit trails.