Proposal Explorer

Add claims to see which ones the mechanisms address.

Operational use

• Operational use Hardware-attested weight binding for hardware-attested weight binding showing users that a service runs its committed weights

Built for an adversarial prover

Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities and Bounding unexplained information in outputs

No new hardware needed

Hardware-attested weight binding

Failures since mitigated

• Launch-state attestation does not by itself cover weights loaded later in Hardware-attested weight binding ^{1 11}

Attack testing records published testing for this use. It does not by itself show independent review, a formal proof or that a deployed system is secure.

• Hardware-attested weight binding: Independent red-team
• Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities: Analysis
• Bounding unexplained information in outputs: Independent red-team

Open critical failures

• Underlying attestation can be forged or relayed in Hardware-attested weight binding

  Critical for weight binding against an operator with physical access to affected hardware, or with control of the hypervisor on an AMD SEV-SNP platform without AMD's fixes. PAL*M excludes physical attacks, and Tinfoil acknowledges this boundary.

  The enclave route inherits the platform-specific TEE attestation failures. Intel TDX forgery and H100 relay were demonstrated with physical access and host control. Battering RAM defeated AMD SEV-SNP attestation on DDR4 servers; RMPocalypse did so from malicious host software on platforms without AMD's fixes. These demonstrate failures of the trust roots, not of each model-commitment protocol. ^{2 3 7 8 9 10}

  Response: The TEE.fail authors report that physical interposer attacks are outside Intel's and AMD's threat models. AMD reports fixes for RMPocalypse.

  Known failure · Demonstrated attack · Critical · Open · Inherited finding. On the record · Related finding in TEE remote attestation for AI workloads

  Related mechanism Proposed Hardware-enabled guarantees (flexHEG) and guarantee processors: A tamper-protected enclosure around the chip is the proposed answer when the party that holds the hardware may attack it physically. A pointer, not evidence that this failure is mitigated. Add

Open significant failures

1 failure in 1 mechanism

• Prompt-controlled entropy inflation widens the covert channel in Bounding unexplained information in outputs

  Gumbel-based inference verification tolerates token choices that honest GPU nondeterminism could produce, and the size of that tolerated set grows with the model's output entropy. Kezins, an independent researcher, showed that an adversary who controls the prompt distribution can raise output entropy and roughly double the bits leaked per token. Across six models of 1 to 32 billion parameters, this cut the slowdown from 146–254 times under benign prompts to 60–118 times. Kezins argues that architectures built on the same unexplained-information bound inherit this attack surface, and recommends calibrating tolerances against local token entropy rather than benign traffic. ^{15 16}

  Known failure · Demonstrated attack · Significant · Open. On the record

  Related mechanism Operational use Deterministic and bit-exact inference: Bit-exact replay would remove the tolerance for numerical noise that sets the size of this channel. The record notes that it needs full hardware and software metadata. A pointer, not evidence that this failure is mitigated. Add

Scope limitations

• For private models, a user can confirm consistency but not content in Hardware-attested weight binding

  When weights are not published, users can check that the same root hash is served each time, but not what the model is. Pairing the hash with an attested evaluation, as in Attestable Audits, is one proposed remedy. ^{1 12}

  Scope limitation · Open question. On the record

• Openings for airflow, power and optics weaken shielding in Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities

  Cankaya notes that keeping attenuation high while passing high-power airflow, cabling and optical links adds complexity beyond existing shielded-enclosure specifications. ¹³

  Scope limitation · Theoretical argument. On the record

• Information the declared computation explains is not bounded in Bounding unexplained information in outputs

  The bound limits unexplained bits only. Outputs that the declared computation fully explains can still carry valuable information: a compression study notes that an adversary with inference access can extract more proprietary information per bit than naive transmission allows. ^{14 17}

  Scope limitation · Theoretical argument. On the record

• Channels other than checked outputs are outside the bound in Bounding unexplained information in outputs

  The inference-verification scheme treats side channels as out of scope. A low-trust system design argues that suppressing physical covert bandwidth below kilobits per second is much more achievable than aiming for zero, and that a malicious device can leak one bit of information by deliberately outputting a wrong result. ^{15 18}

  Scope limitation · Theoretical argument. On the record

  Related mechanism Proposed Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities: Physical side channels need separate suppression, which is this mechanism's purpose. A pointer, not evidence that this failure is mitigated. In the proposal.

Open questions

• Supply-chain implants may evade inspection in Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities

  Cankaya identifies malicious hardware embedded deep in purchased components as a residual risk that visual inspection and disassembly may not catch. He notes that radiographic examination under high-security standards could mitigate it. ¹³

  Open question · Theoretical argument. On the record

• Inspection assumptions may not hold in Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities

  The design's statistical argument assumes that visual or disassembly inspection catches every flaw that is present in a sampled unit. Cankaya is unsure whether destructive teardowns are defence-dominant or offence-dominant. ¹³

  Open question · Open question. On the record

• The facility-level design is untested in Bounding unexplained information in outputs

  The compute-verification architecture is described with protocol details, potential attacks and prototyping plans, but no prototype results have been published. ¹⁴

  Open question · Open question. On the record

Not yet demonstrated

Proposed Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities

Mechanisms on the map that are not in the proposal. Pointers, not recommendations. ?

• Operational use Deterministic and bit-exact inference Add
  • Bears on the open significant failure “Prompt-controlled entropy inflation widens the covert channel” in Bounding unexplained information in outputs. Bit-exact replay would remove the tolerance for numerical noise that sets the size of this channel. The record notes that it needs full hardware and software metadata.
  • Bounding unexplained information in outputs waits on it. Tolerance for numerical nondeterminism sets the size of the residual channel; bit-exact replay would remove it but needs full hardware and software metadata.
• Operational use TEE remote attestation for AI workloads Add
  • Hardware-attested weight binding waits on it. Attestation that resists physical attackers, for the enclave variant.
• Research demo Bandwidth limits and compartmentalization Add
  • Bounding unexplained information in outputs waits on it. The prover's compute must be isolated so that all traffic passes through the verifier's interlock; any unmonitored path voids the bound.
• Operational use Sampled inference recomputation Add
  • Bounding unexplained information in outputs depends on it.
• Proposed Network taps and certifiers Add
  • Bounding unexplained information in outputs depends on it.
• Proposed Hardware-enabled guarantees (flexHEG) and guarantee processors Add

  Excluded by filters: needs new chips

  • Bears on the open critical failure “Underlying attestation can be forged or relayed” in Hardware-attested weight binding. A tamper-protected enclosure around the chip is the proposed answer when the party that holds the hardware may attack it physically.

Missing prerequisites

• Operational use TEE remote attestation for AI workloads needed by Hardware-attested weight binding Add
• Operational use Sampled inference recomputation needed by Bounding unexplained information in outputs Add
• Research demo Bandwidth limits and compartmentalization needed by Bounding unexplained information in outputs Add
• Proposed Network taps and certifiers needed by Bounding unexplained information in outputs Add

Blockers

8 blockers recorded

• Hardware-attested weight binding
  • Attestation that resists physical attackers, for the enclave variant. Hardware trust. Waits on TEE remote attestation for AI workloads ⁷
• Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities
  • No prototype or red-team exists; the design is a first-pass viability study. Adversarial validation ¹³
  • Volume costs of TEMPEST-grade power-line filters are uncertain, because existing products are mostly made to order. Performance & compatibility ¹³
• Bounding unexplained information in outputs
  • The prover's compute must be isolated so that all traffic passes through the verifier's interlock; any unmonitored path voids the bound. Coverage & hidden compute. Waits on Bandwidth limits and compartmentalization ¹⁴
  • Physical side channels need separate suppression, and one design treats a low residual bandwidth, rather than zero, as the realistic target. Coverage & hidden compute. Waits on Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities ^{15 18}
  • Tolerance for numerical nondeterminism sets the size of the residual channel; bit-exact replay would remove it but needs full hardware and software metadata. Protocol soundness. Waits on Deterministic and bit-exact inference ^{16 18}
  • Recomputation over confidential weights and inputs needs a protected setting: prover recomputation in a verifier-controlled enclosure, verifier recomputation in a prover-controlled enclosure, or zero-knowledge proofs. Privacy & leakage ¹⁴
  • No prototype of the facility-level architecture exists to red-team. Adversarial validation ¹⁴

From the family or selected implementation's record. ?

Model weights

Depends on the design for Bounding unexplained information in outputs.

Hidden by Hardware-attested weight binding.

Not involved: Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities.

Inputs and outputs

Depends on the design for Bounding unexplained information in outputs.

Not involved: Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities.

Unspecified for Hardware-attested weight binding. Check the implementation record.

Training data

Not involved: Hardware-attested weight binding, Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities and Bounding unexplained information in outputs.

Hardware-attested weight binding

• Research demo Attestable Audits Research prototype, University of Cambridge
• Research demo PAL*M Research prototype, University of Waterloo
• Operational use Tinfoil model identity (Modelwrap) Product, Tinfoil

Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities

• Proposed AI 2040 inference-only verification stack Proposed architecture, AI Futures Project
• Proposed Low-trust AI compute verification system overview Proposed architecture, Machine Intelligence Research Institute
• Proposed RAND secure inference data center (SIDC) design Proposed architecture, RAND

Bounding unexplained information in outputs

None on the map

1. How Tinfoil Proves Exactly What Model Is Running, Tinfoil Team (2026). Original
2. PAL*M: Property Attestation for Large Generative Models, P. Chantasantitam et al. (2026). Original
3. A primer on secure enclaves, Tinfoil (2026). Original
4. Backend infrastructure, Tinfoil (2026). Original
5. How verification works in Tinfoil, Tinfoil (2026). Original
6. modelwrap: Reproducible dm-verity read-only image of Huggingface models, Tinfoil (2026). Original
7. TEE.fail: Breaking Trusted Execution Environments via DDR5 Memory Bus Interposition, J. Chuang et al. (2026). Original
8. Battering RAM: Low-Cost Interposer Attacks on Confidential Computing via Dynamic Memory Aliasing, J. De Meulemeester et al. (2026). Original
9. RMPocalypse: How a Catch-22 Breaks AMD SEV-SNP, B. Schlüter & S. Shinde (2025). Original
10. SEV-SNP RMP Initialization Vulnerability (AMD-SB-3020), AMD (2025). Original
11. On TEEs for Privacy-Preserving Monitoring in AI Governance, Gloria Z (2026). Original
12. Attestable Audits: Verifiable AI Safety Benchmarks Using Trusted Execution Environments, C. Schnabl et al. (2025). Original
13. Suppressing Side Channels in an Untrusted Data Center via Retrofitted Defenses, N. Cankaya (2026). Original
14. Verifying AI Compute by Bounding Unexplained Information Exfiltration, J. Petrie & Y. Mühlhäuser (2026). Original
15. Verifying LLM Inference to Detect Model Weight Exfiltration, R. Rinberg et al. (2025). Original
16. Adversarial Entropy Inflation Against Gumbel-Based Inference Verification, N. Kezins (2026). Original
17. Haiku to Opus in Just 10 bits: LLMs Unlock Large Compression Gains, R. Rinberg et al. (2026). Original
18. A System Overview for Near-Term, Low-Trust AI Compute Verification, N. Cankaya (2026). Original