Proposal Explorer

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Chip location verification and Network taps and certifiers

No new hardware needed

Chip location verification

Flaws since mitigated

• Verifier dictionary attacks on hashes in Network taps and certifiers ⁸

Published attempts to break a system, including those that found failures. Testing history does not show that open flaws are resolved.

• Chip location verification: Analysis
• Network taps and certifiers: Analysis

Open significant flaws

9 flaws in 2 mechanisms

• Extracting a chip's key lets another device answer for it in Chip location verification

  Ping-based protocols rely on cryptographic keys stored on the chip. Tee and Happel argue that an adversary with physical access could extract these keys and so compromise location verification. They propose GPU fingerprints as a mitigation, so far tested on 24 GPUs. Brass and Aarne assume the keys are stored securely, for example in a TPM. ^{1 6}

  Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. On the record

• Added delay can shift an estimated position in Chip location verification

  Brass and Aarne cite internet-geolocation research in which artificially increased round-trip times moved the estimated location by up to 1,000 km, with a 74% chance of avoiding detection. Avellar and Grunewald list inflated ping times from circuitous routing as an evasion route. Added delay only loosens a distance bound, and Brass and Aarne propose a hard time limit as the counter: a chip that replies too slowly cannot be ruled out of a restricted location. ^{1 4}

  Demonstrated attack · Significant · Open. On the record

• Faster-than-assumed network paths in Chip location verification

  Brass and Aarne list dark fibre and other private high-speed interconnects as ways to lower measured delays artificially. They judge that leasing dark fibre would probably not be a considerable challenge for covertly or openly adversarial actors. Avellar and Grunewald note that this can make a chip appear to be somewhere else entirely. A limit set at the vacuum speed of light cannot be beaten, but it makes honest chips fail more often. ^{1 4}

  Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. On the record

• Compromised landmarks can falsify measurements in Chip location verification

  A party that controls landmark servers can report false timing. Brass and Aarne cite research in which manipulating a third of the landmarks shifted the estimated location by about 700 km. Avellar and Grunewald note that compromised landmarks let adversaries spoof travel-time measurements directly. The draft specification asks verifiers to require anchors in diverse places, run by several independent operators. ^{1 4 5}

  Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. On the record

• Output nondeterminism leaves covert capacity in Network taps and certifiers

  Hashing cannot remove information hidden in the outputs themselves. The Secure Gateway Device paper estimates that about 0.1 bit per token remains even with seed-synchronized replay checks. For a 200k-GPU inference cluster at full load (2,000 tokens per GPU per second), that is about 40 Mbit/s of covert egress, enough to move a 1 TB model in under three days. The paper names this the core remaining challenge and points to deterministic replay or active scrubbing of hardware-induced entropy. An independent study found that an adversary who chooses the prompts roughly doubles the bits leaked per token under Gumbel-based inference verification; see Bounding unexplained information in outputs. ^{8 16}

  Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. On the record

  Related mechanism R3 Deterministic and bit-exact inference: Deterministic replay is one of the two remedies the flaw's source names. A pointer, not evidence that this flaw is mitigated. Add

  Related mechanism R2 Bounding unexplained information in outputs: Bounds the hidden information outputs can carry by measuring what the declared computation fails to predict. A pointer, not evidence that this flaw is mitigated. Add

• Some links cannot be passively tapped in Network taps and certifiers

  Cankaya notes that copper-connected scale-up domains (for example NVL72 racks and TPU v7 cubes) are much harder to tap than fibre, and that optical budgets make passive taps impractical on 400GBASE-SR8 multimode links. Amodo found no taps advertised for 53 GBaud links as of May 2026. ^{9 17}

  Open question · Significant · Open. On the record

• Encrypted fabrics hide plaintext from both parties in Network taps and certifiers

  Cankaya notes that with TEE-protected sessions whose keys are ephemeral and managed inside the TEE, neither the operator nor the manufacturer can recover session keys after the session, so tapped traffic could not be opened for recomputation. For other encrypted fabrics, the operator can retain keys. ⁹

  Open question · Significant · Open. On the record

• Residual side channels in simple passive setups in Network taps and certifiers

  Amodo's analysis of its own tapped prototype lists unvalidated header fields, timing of permitted traffic and variation in response formatting as residual channels, and concludes that the passive tap must be replaced by an active one. ¹²

  Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. On the record

• Completeness rests on physical monitoring left out of scope in Network taps and certifiers

  The Secure Gateway Device paper assumes the facility is physically monitored, and states that the whole architecture depends on the device being the only communication channel. It names radio emanation, power-line signalling and thermal channels as covert channels beyond that scope. ⁸

  Open question · Significant · Open. On the record

  Related mechanism R1 Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities: Addresses the radio, power-line and thermal channels that network-level designs leave out. A pointer, not evidence that this flaw is mitigated. Add

Not yet demonstrated

R1 Chip location verification and R1 Network taps and certifiers

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

• R3 Deterministic and bit-exact inference Add
  • Bears on the open significant flaw “Output nondeterminism leaves covert capacity” in Network taps and certifiers. Deterministic replay is one of the two remedies the flaw's source names.
  • Network taps and certifiers waits on it. Nondeterministic inference leaves covert capacity in outputs that hashing cannot remove.
• R2 Bounding unexplained information in outputs Add
  • Bears on the open significant flaw “Output nondeterminism leaves covert capacity” in Network taps and certifiers. Bounds the hidden information outputs can carry by measuring what the declared computation fails to predict.
• R1 Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities Add
  • Bears on the open significant flaw “Completeness rests on physical monitoring left out of scope” in Network taps and certifiers. Addresses the radio, power-line and thermal channels that network-level designs leave out.
  • Network taps and certifiers waits on it. Radio, power-line and thermal channels are not addressed by network-level designs.
• R2 Tamper evidence for verifier devices Add
  • Network taps and certifiers waits on it. Taps and gateway devices need tamper-evident housing and physical monitoring so that traffic cannot bypass them.
• R3 Sampled inference recomputation Add
  • Network taps and certifiers depends on it.
• R3 TEE remote attestation for AI workloads Add
  • Chip location verification depends on it.

Missing prerequisites

• R3 TEE remote attestation for AI workloads needed by Chip location verification Add
• R3 Sampled inference recomputation needed by Network taps and certifiers Add
• R3 Deterministic and bit-exact inference needed by Network taps and certifiers Add
• R2 Tamper evidence for verifier devices needed by Network taps and certifiers Add
• R1 Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities needed by Network taps and certifiers Add

Blockers

9 blockers recorded

• Chip location verification
  • No public code or reproducible end-to-end location results are available for the reported H100 prototype. Adversarial validation ^{2 3}
  • Per-chip keys must be provisioned and protected against extraction; hardware-integrated, tamper-resistant versions still need R&D. Hardware trust ^{1 6 18}
  • The time limit forces a trade-off: a limit at the speed of light in fibre can be beaten by faster links, while one at the vacuum speed of light makes honest chips fail often. Protocol soundness ¹
  • A trusted landmark network must be built and secured, and who should operate it, under what oversight, is unsettled. Access & governance ^{1 4}
• Network taps and certifiers
  • No complete verification tap has been demonstrated at production frontend link rates, and on the tested CPU no hash algorithm reached line rate with minimum-size frames. Performance & compatibility ^{17 19}
  • Nondeterministic inference leaves covert capacity in outputs that hashing cannot remove. Evidence binding. Waits on Deterministic and bit-exact inference ⁸
  • Taps and gateway devices need tamper-evident housing and physical monitoring so that traffic cannot bypass them. Hardware trust. Waits on Tamper evidence for verifier devices ^{8 10}
  • Radio, power-line and thermal channels are not addressed by network-level designs. Coverage & hidden compute. Waits on Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities ⁸
  • Red-teaming by specialists is called for but has not been reported. Adversarial validation ⁸

From the family or selected implementation's record. ?

Model weights

Depends on the design for Network taps and certifiers.

Not involved: Chip location verification.

Inputs and outputs

Depends on the design for Network taps and certifiers.

Not involved: Chip location verification.

Training data

Depends on the design for Network taps and certifiers.

Not involved: Chip location verification.

Chip location verification

• R1 Lucid sovereignty (location) certificates Standard, Lucid Computing

Network taps and certifiers

• R1 AI 2040 inference-only verification stack Proposed architecture, AI Futures Project
• R1 Low-trust AI compute verification system overview Proposed architecture, Machine Intelligence Research Institute
• R1 SASH confidential network logger Research prototype, Singapore AI Safety Hub (SASH)

1. Location Verification for AI Chips, A. Brass & O. Aarne (2024). Original
2. Location Verification for AI Chips (issue brief), A. Brass (2025). Original
3. Ping-based Location, Ulyssean (2025). Original
4. Near-Term Verification Methods for AI Chip Exports, B. Avellar & E. Grunewald (2026). Original
5. Sovereignty Certificates: draft specification, version 0.1.0, Sovereignty Certificates Working Group (2025). Original
6. GPU Fingerprinting for Location Verification, W. Tee & J. Happel (2026). Original
7. Secure, Governable Chips: Using On-Chip Mechanisms to Manage National Security Risks from AI & Advanced Computing, O. Aarne et al. (2024). Original
8. Fingerprinting All AI Cluster I/O Without Mutually Trusted Processors, N. Cankaya et al. (2026). Original
9. The Fundamentals and Feasibility of Secure Network Taps for Verifying AI Datacenter Use, N. Cankaya (2026). Original
10. A System Overview for Near-Term, Low-Trust AI Compute Verification, N. Cankaya (2026). Original
11. Verification Plan, R. Dean (2026). Original
12. Fitting a Network TAP to our Inference Verification Prototype, Amodo Design (2026). Original
13. Amodo-Design/Inference-Recomputation-Prototype (GitHub repository), Amodo Design (2026). Original
14. inference-verification: Inference Verification Prototype, Singapore AI Safety Hub (SASH) (2026). Original
15. Internationalising AI Verification, Singapore AI Safety Hub (SASH) (2026). Original
16. Adversarial Entropy Inflation Against Gumbel-Based Inference Verification, N. Kezins (2026). Original
17. Network Tapping for AI Verification: A Technical Assessment, Amodo Design (2026). Original
18. Hardware-Level Governance of AI Compute: A Feasibility Taxonomy for Regulatory Compliance and Treaty Verification, S. Ansari (2026). Original
19. Network Traffic Hashing, Amodo Design (2026). Original