# AI verification proposal

A proposal built with the Proposal Explorer of the AI Verification Tech Map (https://trustbutveri.fyi/), from its records of 2026-10-08. Interactive version: https://trustbutveri.fyi/explorer/?mechanisms=M-0013,M-0020&implementations=M-0013:I-0008

How to read it: a claim is something one party wants to verify about another's AI hardware or software. A mechanism is a general technique for verifying claims; it is "aimed at" a claim when that is its direct purpose, and "supporting" when it contributes without being aimed at it. A claim is addressed when a mechanism in the proposal is aimed at it and is not excluded by the filters; addressed does not mean verified, so check that mechanism's readiness and open flaws. Readiness levels R0 to R4 describe one record's public evidence for its assessed use and are never combined. Definitions: https://trustbutveri.fyi/about/methodology/ (roles, properties and flaws) and https://trustbutveri.fyi/about/readiness/ (readiness levels).

## Filters

Filters apply to mechanisms only and describe the setting the proposal is for.

None set. Every mechanism on the map was available.

## Overview

One row per mechanism, read from its record. Open flaws: critical / significant / minor. The last three columns are the editors' reading of what the verifier sees.

| Mechanism | Readiness | Prover | Attack testing | Hardware | Open flaws | Weights | Inputs and outputs | Training data |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Network taps and certifiers / SASH confidential network logger | R1 | Semi-trusted | None | Retrofit device | 0 / 2 / 1 | unspecified | unspecified | unspecified |
| Remote detection of data centres | R1 | Adversarial | Analysis | None | 0 / 3 / 0 | not involved | not involved | not involved |

## Claims

No claims chosen.

## Mechanisms

### Network taps and certifiers

An open-source prototype that routes a facility's inference traffic through a logger and re-runs requests on a separate cluster to check it serves inference. ([Network taps and certifiers](https://trustbutveri.fyi/mechanisms/network-taps-and-certifiers/))

- Assessment: selected implementation [SASH confidential network logger](https://trustbutveri.fyi/implementations/sash-confidential-network-logger/).
- Readiness: R1 Proposed, assessed for telling inference from training on a mutually inspected cluster.
- Claims in this proposal: none of them.
- Threat model: semi-trusted prover. Hardware: retrofit device. Prover cooperation: required. Attack testing: none. Category: Off-chip devices & sensors.
- What the verifier sees: model weights unspecified; inputs and outputs unspecified; training data unspecified. This Explorer has no asset-specific exposure assessment for this implementation. Check its source and deployment assumptions.

### Remote detection of data centres

Remote detection locates large data centres and estimates their power capacity without site access, using satellite imagery, heat signatures and public records such as permits. ([Remote detection of data centres](https://trustbutveri.fyi/mechanisms/remote-detection-of-data-centres/))

- Assessment: mechanism family.
- Readiness: R1 Proposed, assessed for finding undeclared data centres above an agreed compute threshold.
- Claims in this proposal: none of them.
- Threat model: adversarial prover. Hardware: none. Prover cooperation: not required. Attack testing: analysis. Category: Remote & side-channel sensing.
- What the verifier sees: model weights not involved; inputs and outputs not involved; training data not involved. Works from outside the facility; it does not handle model data.


## Properties

**Built for an adversarial prover**

- Remote detection of data centres

**No new hardware needed**

- Remote detection of data centres


## Attack testing

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

**Testing history**

- Remote detection of data centres: Analysis


## Limits

**Open significant flaws**

- Recomputation cluster security is not monitored (open question, in SASH confidential network logger; https://trustbutveri.fyi/implementations/sash-confidential-network-logger/#flaw-1) [1]. SASH states that the current prototype has no means to monitor the security of the recomputation cluster, which holds a copy of the model and decides whether an alarm is raised.
- Side channels not yet addressed (open question, in SASH confidential network logger; https://trustbutveri.fyi/implementations/sash-confidential-network-logger/#flaw-2) [1]. SASH lists eliminating a wider range of side-channel vulnerabilities as future work.
- Facilities can be disguised or hidden (theoretical argument, in Remote detection of data centres; https://trustbutveri.fyi/mechanisms/remote-detection-of-data-centres/#flaw-1) [8]. Halstead and Larsen discuss two ways to hide a facility. One is to disguise it as a legitimate industrial site. The other is to build it underground, with cooling that avoids visible heat plumes. They note that the underground option requires bespoke engineering.
- Small sites may not be detectable (theoretical argument, in Remote detection of data centres; https://trustbutveri.fyi/mechanisms/remote-detection-of-data-centres/#flaw-2) [8][10]. Halstead and Larsen conclude that a sufficiently small covert project could not be ruled out with confidence. In their estimates, the chance of detection is lower for smaller sites. Krawec notes that small data centres in existing buildings may lack the distinctive features of large facilities.

  Related mechanism: Chip registries and manufacturing records (R1, not in the proposal). Accounts for chips from the fab onwards, which does not depend on a site being visible.
- Search for unknown sites is undemonstrated (open question, in Remote detection of data centres; https://trustbutveri.fyi/mechanisms/remote-detection-of-data-centres/#flaw-3) [10]. Krawec reports that telling data centres apart from other industrial facilities systematically is difficult. Automating detection would need large amounts of training imagery and a purpose-trained model. In Krawec's words, automated data-centre detection "remains primarily conceptual at present".

**Family finding context**

- Context for SASH confidential network logger; applicability depends on the finding's scope. Output nondeterminism leaves covert capacity (theoretical argument, in Network taps and certifiers; https://trustbutveri.fyi/mechanisms/network-taps-and-certifiers/#flaw-1) [3][4]. 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.

  Related mechanism: Deterministic and bit-exact inference (R3, not in the proposal). Deterministic replay is one of the two remedies the flaw's source names.

  Related mechanism: Bounding unexplained information in outputs (R2, not in the proposal). Bounds the hidden information outputs can carry by measuring what the declared computation fails to predict.
- Context for SASH confidential network logger; applicability depends on the finding's scope. Some links cannot be passively tapped (open question, in Network taps and certifiers; https://trustbutveri.fyi/mechanisms/network-taps-and-certifiers/#flaw-2) [5][6]. 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.
- Context for SASH confidential network logger; applicability depends on the finding's scope. Encrypted fabrics hide plaintext from both parties (open question, in Network taps and certifiers; https://trustbutveri.fyi/mechanisms/network-taps-and-certifiers/#flaw-3) [5]. 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.
- Context for SASH confidential network logger; applicability depends on the finding's scope. Residual side channels in simple passive setups (theoretical argument, in Network taps and certifiers; https://trustbutveri.fyi/mechanisms/network-taps-and-certifiers/#flaw-4) [7]. 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.
- Context for SASH confidential network logger; applicability depends on the finding's scope. Completeness rests on physical monitoring left out of scope (open question, in Network taps and certifiers; https://trustbutveri.fyi/mechanisms/network-taps-and-certifiers/#flaw-5) [3]. 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.

  Related mechanism: Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities (R1, not in the proposal). Addresses the radio, power-line and thermal channels that network-level designs leave out.
- Context for SASH confidential network logger; applicability depends on the finding's scope. Verifier dictionary attacks on hashes (theoretical argument, in Network taps and certifiers; https://trustbutveri.fyi/mechanisms/network-taps-and-certifiers/#flaw-6) [3]. Hashes of very short outputs could be brute-forced by the verifier. The paper recommends hashing at least 5 tokens together, or at least 10 if the attacker filters for likely tokens.

**Open minor flaws**

- Logger hardware supply chain (open question, in SASH confidential network logger; https://trustbutveri.fyi/implementations/sash-confidential-network-logger/#flaw-3) [1]. The prototype uses a Raspberry Pi 5 as the logger, which SASH says locks the design into Broadcom and Arm supply chains.

**Not yet demonstrated**

- Network taps and certifiers: R1 Proposed, assessed for telling inference from training on a mutually inspected cluster
- Remote detection of data centres: R1 Proposed, assessed for finding undeclared data centres above an agreed compute threshold


## Possible additions

Mechanisms on the map, not in the proposal, that the records connect to an unaddressed or partly addressed claim, an open flaw or a dependency. Pointers, not recommendations: each brings its own readiness level and flaws, and none is claimed to close a flaw.

- **Chip registries and manufacturing records** (R1 Proposed, assessed for a checkable record of which chips were made and who declared owning them)
  - Bears on the open significant flaw "Small sites may not be detectable" in Remote detection of data centres. Accounts for chips from the fab onwards, which does not depend on a site being visible.
- **Deterministic and bit-exact inference** (R3 In production, assessed for reproducing open-model inference from receipts in Gensyn's information-market service)
  - Network taps and certifiers waits on it: Exact-match recomputation requires reproducible inference.
- **Tamper evidence for verifier devices** (R2 Demonstrated, assessed for detecting probing of proposed verifier hardware, using server and electronics prototypes as evidence)
  - Network taps and certifiers depends on it.


## Dependencies

**Missing prerequisites**

- Deterministic and bit-exact inference (R3 In production, assessed for reproducing open-model inference from receipts in Gensyn's information-market service), needed by Network taps and certifiers
- Tamper evidence for verifier devices (R2 Demonstrated, assessed for detecting probing of proposed verifier hardware, using server and electronics prototypes as evidence), needed by Network taps and certifiers

**Blockers**

- Network taps and certifiers: The planned FPGA logger has not yet been built. (hardware trust) [1]
- Network taps and certifiers: The design has not been scaled to production traffic volumes. (performance & compatibility) [1]
- Network taps and certifiers: Exact-match recomputation requires reproducible inference. (evidence binding; waits on Deterministic and bit-exact inference) [2]
- Remote detection of data centres: Wide-area, automated detection of data centres is not yet practical and needs large training datasets. (coverage & hidden compute) [10]
- Remote detection of data centres: No measured detection or false-alarm rates for finding undeclared facilities have been published. (adversarial validation) [8][10]
- Remote detection of data centres: Recent high-resolution imagery is costly, is limited by weather and needs trained analysts. (access & governance) [10]


## What the verifier sees

- Model weights: shown by none; depends on the design for none; hidden by none; not involved in Remote detection of data centres; unspecified for Network taps and certifiers.
- Inputs and outputs: shown by none; depends on the design for none; hidden by none; not involved in Remote detection of data centres; unspecified for Network taps and certifiers.
- Training data: shown by none; depends on the design for none; hidden by none; not involved in Remote detection of data centres; unspecified for Network taps and certifiers.

## Implementations

- Network taps and certifiers: [AI 2040 inference-only verification stack](https://trustbutveri.fyi/implementations/ai-2040-inference-only-verification-plan/) (R1, proposed architecture); [Low-trust AI compute verification system overview](https://trustbutveri.fyi/implementations/low-trust-compute-verification-system-overview/) (R1, proposed architecture); [SASH confidential network logger](https://trustbutveri.fyi/implementations/sash-confidential-network-logger/) (R1, research prototype)
- Remote detection of data centres: none on the map

## Sources

1. Internationalising AI Verification, Singapore AI Safety Hub (SASH) (2026). https://www.aisafety.sg/research/internationalising-ai-verification
2. inference-verification: Inference Verification Prototype, Singapore AI Safety Hub (SASH) (2026). https://github.com/sg-ai-safety-hub/inference-verification
3. Fingerprinting All AI Cluster I/O Without Mutually Trusted Processors, N. Cankaya et al. (2026). https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.10724
4. Adversarial Entropy Inflation Against Gumbel-Based Inference Verification, N. Kezins (2026). https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.23375
5. The Fundamentals and Feasibility of Secure Network Taps for Verifying AI Datacenter Use, N. Cankaya (2026). https://nacicankaya.substack.com/p/research-note-the-fundamentals-and
6. Network Tapping for AI Verification: A Technical Assessment, Amodo Design (2026). https://amododesign.com/notes/2026-05-03-network-tapping/
7. Fitting a Network TAP to our Inference Verification Prototype, Amodo Design (2026). https://amododesign.com/notes/2026-09-15-network-tap-inference-verification/
8. Covert AI Projects, B. Halstead & T. Larsen (2026). https://ai-2040.com/supplements/covert-ai-projects
9. Verifying International Agreements on AI: Six Layers of Verification for Rules on Large-Scale AI Development and Deployment, M. Baker et al. (2025). https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA4077-1.html
10. Tracking Hyperscale AI Data Center Growth with Satellite Imagery, C. Krawec (2026). https://fas.org/publication/tracking-hyperscale/
11. Introducing the Frontier Data Centers Hub, Epoch AI (2025). https://epoch.ai/latest/introducing-the-frontier-data-centers-hub
12. AI Data Centers Documentation – Methodology, Epoch AI (2026). https://epoch.ai/data/data-centers-documentation/methodology