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A verification proposal from the AI Verification Tech Map, from its records of 2026-10-08. https://trustbutveri.fyi/explorer/?mechanisms=M-0018,M-0013,M-0001&ready=R2&hide=weights

Claims

Mechanisms3

Filters:×× 14 of 25 match · Clear

Applied filters: Minimum readiness: R2 Demonstrated; Keep hidden from the verifier: model weights. Not set (Any): Prover, Verifier devices on site, Prover cooperation, Chips, Attack testing.

Analysis

Applied filters: Minimum readiness: R2 Demonstrated; Keep hidden from the verifier: model weights. Not set (Any): Prover, Verifier devices on site, Prover cooperation, Chips, Attack testing.

MechanismReadinessOpen flaws
Chip location verification ⚠ excluded by your filters: readiness R1 R14 significant
Network taps and certifiers ⚠ excluded by your filters: readiness R1 R15 significant
Sampled inference recomputation R33 significant1 minor
  • Open flaws: n critical n significant n minor
  • ⚠ Dimmed: excluded by your filters, with the conflicting field highlighted
Claim coverageNo claims yet

Add claims to see which ones the mechanisms address.

Properties1 in production · 1 built for an adversarial prover
In production
Built for an adversarial prover
Sampled inference recomputation
No new hardware needed
Sampled inference recomputation
Not counted
Excluded by your filters: Chip location verification and Network taps and certifiers
Attack testing3 mechanisms with published testing

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

Limits2 excluded by filters · 2 not yet demonstrated · 3 mechanisms with open significant findings
Excluded by your filters
Open significant flaws
12 flaws in 3 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

  • Tolerance for numerical noise leaves a covert channel in Sampled inference recomputation

    Schemes that accept approximate matches can put an upper bound on an adversary's covert bandwidth, but they cannot close the channel. The weight-exfiltration detector cut exfiltratable information to under 0.5%, not to zero, on a 30-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model under benign prompt traffic. Its authors called the channel's size under adversarial prompts an open empirical question. An independent study showed that an adversary who controls the prompts roughly doubles the bits leaked per token. Across six models, that cut the slowdown from 146–254 times under benign prompts to 60–118 times. The attack widens the exfiltration bound. It does not target the check that outputs match the declared model. 16 18 28

    Demonstrated attack · Significant · Open. On the record

    Related mechanism R3 Deterministic and bit-exact inference: Bit-exact inference would remove the numerical tolerance if exact replay can be deployed with the required weights and configuration. A pointer, not evidence that this flaw is mitigated. Add

  • Only recorded traffic is checked in Sampled inference recomputation

    Recomputation checks that recorded, declared workloads are correct. It cannot show that the record is complete. The published schemes do not cover hidden workloads run on the same compute, or substituted work. Rinberg et al. say their exfiltration-detection scheme cannot stand alone. 18 29

    Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. On the record

    Related mechanism R1 Network taps and certifiers: Taps copy and hash all traffic on the monitored links, which bears on whether the traffic record is complete. They do not show what else ran on the same chips. A pointer, not evidence that this flaw is mitigated. In the proposal.

  • Some inference optimizations are not covered in Sampled inference recomputation

    TOPLOC's authors state that it cannot detect speculative decoding in which a cheaper model does the decoding. They did not test whether it distinguishes types of key-value (KV) cache compression. DiFR was evaluated only on sampling from a single model. Its authors sketch an extension to one speculative-decoding algorithm but do not test it. 19 20

    Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. On the record

Open minor flaws
1 mechanism with minor findings
  • Mixed hardware widens the honest baseline in Sampled inference recomputation

    When honest reference runs span different GPU types, the spread of benign scores grows. In DiFR's tests on Qwen3-30B-A3B, pooling A100 and H200 runs left Token-DiFR unable to separate the two smallest tested changes, a temperature of 1.1 instead of 1.0 and a simulated top-2 sampling bug, at the target false-positive rate, while cross-entropy separated them. Matched provider and verifier environments, or pooling that weights rare large deviations, restored detection. 19

    Open question · Minor · Open. On the record

Possible additions3 for open flaws · 4 for dependencies

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

    • 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.
    • Bears on the open significant flaw “Tolerance for numerical noise leaves a covert channel” in Sampled inference recomputation. Bit-exact inference would remove the numerical tolerance if exact replay can be deployed with the required weights and configuration.
    • Network taps and certifiers waits on it. Nondeterministic inference leaves covert capacity in outputs that hashing cannot remove.
    • 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.
    • Network taps and certifiers waits on it. Taps and gateway devices need tamper-evident housing and physical monitoring so that traffic cannot bypass them.
    • Chip location verification depends on it.
  • Excluded by filters: readiness R1

    • 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.
Dependencies4 missing prerequisites · 14 blockers
Missing prerequisites
Blockers
14 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 30
    • 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 31
    • 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
  • Sampled inference recomputation
    • In tap-based retrofit designs, recording all inference traffic needs network taps and recomputation servers that can ingest it, in the worst case one recomputation-server network interface per inference front-end interface. Coverage & hidden compute. Waits on Network taps and certifiers 11 25
    • In retrofit designs, the recomputation server must sit inside the prover's data centre, possibly under the prover's physical control, and still be protected from a compromised provider, which Amodo rates 'not on track'. Hardware trust 18 25
    • No independent red-team of a recomputation consistency check has been published (the one independent attack study targets the weight-exfiltration bound), and Amodo rates recomputation red-teaming 'not started'. Adversarial validation 16 25
    • Tolerance-based checks need calibration on trusted hardware and exact knowledge of the provider's sampling procedure, and in one prototype a sampling-implementation mismatch produced large spurious differences. Performance & compatibility 19 24
    • The verifier needs the model weights, so checking a closed-weights model requires a trusted, confidential recomputation environment, which the retrofit designs place inside the prover's facility. Privacy & leakage 10 19 29
What the verifier sees2 depend on design

From the family or selected implementation's record.

Model weights

Depends on the design for Network taps and certifiers and Sampled inference recomputation.

Not involved: Chip location verification.

Inputs and outputs

Depends on the design for Network taps and certifiers and Sampled inference recomputation.

Not involved: Chip location verification.

Training data

Depends on the design for Network taps and certifiers.

Not involved: Chip location verification and Sampled inference recomputation.

Exposure notes
  • Chip location verification: Times signed replies from chips; it does not handle model data.
  • Network taps and certifiers: Only hashes leave the site; records picked for a challenge are opened for replay at a verification facility.
  • Sampled inference recomputation: Recomputation needs the weights and sampled requests inside the checking environment. For closed models, the record describes a trusted, confidential environment; disclosure to the verifier depends on that boundary. 10 19 29
Implementations6 systems
Chip location verification
Network taps and certifiers
Sampled inference recomputation
Sources31 cited
  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. Verifying LLM Inference to Detect Model Weight Exfiltration, R. Rinberg et al. (2025). Original
  19. DiFR: Inference Verification Despite Nondeterminism, A. Karvonen et al. (2025). Original
  20. TOPLOC: A Locality Sensitive Hashing Scheme for Trustless Verifiable Inference, J. M. Ong et al. (2025). Original
  21. PrimeIntellect-ai/toploc (GitHub repository), Prime Intellect (2025). Original
  22. INTELLECT-2: A Reasoning Model Trained Through Globally Decentralized Reinforcement Learning, Prime Intellect Team et al. (2025). Original
  23. adamkarvonen/difr (GitHub repository), A. Karvonen (2025). Original
  24. Scaling Recomputation Inference Verification, Amodo Design (2026). Original
  25. AI 2040 Plan A — Verification SITREP, Amodo Design (2026). Original
  26. SYNTHETIC-2 Release: Four Million Collaboratively Generated Reasoning Traces, Prime Intellect (2025). Original
  27. An Inference Verification Prototype — Stage 1, Amodo Design (2026). Original
  28. Bit-Exact AI Inference Verification Without Performance Tradeoffs, N. Cankaya (2026). Original
  29. Example Schemes for Verifying High-Stakes AI Agreements, Amodo Design (2026). Original
  30. Hardware-Level Governance of AI Compute: A Feasibility Taxonomy for Regulatory Compliance and Treaty Verification, S. Ansari (2026). Original
  31. Network Traffic Hashing, Amodo Design (2026). Original

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14 of 25 mechanisms match · Clear all

Prover

How far can the party being checked be trusted?

The prover is the party being checked. Semi-trusted designs rely on part of its stack: usually the chip vendor's hardware root of trust, its firmware or counters, or its supply-chain records. Adversarial designs aim to hold even if it cheats wherever the checks allow, within their stated assumptions.

Keeps mechanisms whose threat model holds against at least this prover. Adversarial is the strongest assumption. Definitions

Verifier devices on site

May the verifier install its own hardware at the prover's sites?

Some mechanisms need a device the verifier owns or trusts at the prover's facility, such as a network tap, a bandwidth limiter or a sealed sensor. Choose Not allowed when the setting rules that out. Inspectors are not covered.

"Not allowed" removes mechanisms that need a retrofit device, such as a network tap or a sealed sensor. Definitions

Prover cooperation

How much must the prover take part?

Required: the prover takes part, for example by logging requests, producing proofs or opening records. Partial: some access, such as installing a device. Not required: works from outside, such as satellite imagery.

"Partial at most" removes mechanisms that need the prover's active participation. "Not required" keeps only those that work without it. Definitions

Chips

May the proposal depend on new chip designs?

New chip features take years to reach a deployed fleet and cover only chips made after they ship. Mechanisms that use shipping features, such as trusted execution environments or performance counters, stay.

"Existing chips only" removes mechanisms that need changes to future chip designs. Definitions

Minimum readiness

How mature must each mechanism be?

A level describes the public evidence for a mechanism's stated use, not its cost or feasibility. R3 can still have open critical flaws.

Keeps mechanisms whose readiness level is at least this one. Definitions

Attack testing

How hard has each mechanism been attacked in public?

The strongest published attempt to break the mechanism for its verification use: a security analysis, red-teaming by its developers or collaborators, or a red team independent of them.

Keeps mechanisms whose strongest published attack testing is at least this. Definitions

Keep hidden from the verifier

What must the verifier never see? Choose any.

Model weights: the checked model's parameters. Inputs and outputs: the requests a deployed model serves and its responses. Training data: what a model was trained on. Each mechanism's exposure is the editors' reading of its record: shown, depends on the design (kept, with a note), hidden, not involved, or unspecified for a selected implementation. Code and configuration are not covered yet.

Removes mechanisms that show the asset to the verifier. Conditional or unspecified exposure stays with a note and needs checking against the privacy requirement.

Claims

A claim is something one party wants to verify about another party's AI hardware or software. Each claim's number shows how the proposal addresses it.

  • Addressed. A mechanism in the proposal is aimed at this claim and is not excluded by the filters.
  • Partly addressed. Only supporting mechanisms, or mechanisms aimed at it that the filters exclude.
  • Unaddressed. No mechanism in the proposal addresses this claim.

Addressed means a mechanism in the proposal is aimed at the claim and is not excluded by your filters. It does not mean the claim is verified: check its assessed use, readiness, assumptions and open flaws.

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Mechanisms

A mechanism is a general technique for verifying claims. Its badge is its readiness level for its stated use. An optional implementation choice narrows its assumptions, assessed use and claim links to that record. Lines join it to the claims it addresses. Click a line for details.Under its name it lists the claims it is aimed at or supports.

  • Aimed at the claim: verifying it is a direct purpose of the mechanism.
  • Supports the claim: helps verify it without being aimed at it.
  • Faint: excluded by your filters, so it does not count towards claim coverage.

All mechanisms

Overview

One row per mechanism in the proposal. Every mark comes from that mechanism's record, as listed in the panels below; what the verifier sees is the editors' reading of the record's text. Flaw counts are per mechanism. Summary counts name mechanisms with open findings, not a sum of attacks. Choosing an implementation narrows each row to that record's assessed use; family findings remain as context.

What the verifier sees

For model weights, inputs and outputs, and training data. This is the editors' reading of each mechanism's record (its threat model, how it works and its limitations), not a field of the record. Shown: the verifier sees it. Depends: on the design or variant, or the verifier sees only samples. Hidden: the verifier sees only commitments, hashes, proofs or results. Not involved: the record does not handle it. Unspecified: the selected implementation has no asset-specific assessment here.

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. They are pointers, not recommendations: each brings its own readiness level and flaws, and none is claimed to close a flaw. Links from flaws are the editors' reading of the two records.

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