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Built for an adversarial prover

Bounding unexplained information in outputs and Sampled inference recomputation

No new hardware needed

Sampled inference recomputation

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

• Bounding unexplained information in outputs: Independent red-team
• Sampled inference recomputation, DiFR (Divergence From Reference): Analysis

Family findings

• Sampled inference recomputation

  Context for DiFR (Divergence From Reference). These findings concern the family or other implementations; applicability must be checked against their stated scope.

  • 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. ^{2 3 12}

    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. ^{2 13}

    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. Add

  • 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. ^{6 14}

    Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. On the record

  • 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. ⁶

    Open question · Minor · Open. On the record

Open significant flaws

6 flaws in 2 mechanisms

• 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. ^{2 3}

  Demonstrated attack · Significant · Open. On the record

  Related mechanism R3 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 flaw is mitigated. Add

• 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. ^{1 4}

  Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. 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. ^{2 5}

  Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. On the record

  Related mechanism R1 Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities: Physical side channels need separate suppression, which is this mechanism's purpose. A pointer, not evidence that this flaw is mitigated. Add

• 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. ¹

  Open question · Significant · Open. On the record

• Statistical tolerance leaves a covert channel in DiFR (Divergence From Reference)

  Statistical schemes can put an upper bound on an adversary's covert bandwidth, but cannot close it. In the companion exfiltration study, the detector cut exfiltratable information to under 0.5% under benign prompt traffic. It did not cut it to zero. Its authors called the channel's size under adversarial prompts an open empirical question. An independent study attacked that detector, which uses the same Gumbel-margin statistic. An adversary who controls the prompts roughly doubled the bits leaked per token. Across six models, this cut the slowdown from 146–254 times under benign prompts to 60–118 times. The attack widens the exfiltration bound. It does not target DiFR's check that outputs match the declared configuration. ^{2 3 12}

  Demonstrated attack · Significant · Open. On the record

• Speculative decoding and multi-model sampling not evaluated in DiFR (Divergence From Reference)

  The algorithms and experiments cover sampling from a single LLM. Speculative decoding was not evaluated. The authors sketch an extension to one speculative-decoding algorithm, without experiments. They note that other variants would need modified verification and extra metadata. ⁶

  Open question · Significant · Open. On the record

Open minor flaws

1 mechanism with minor findings

• Mixed hardware widens the honest baseline in DiFR (Divergence From Reference)

  For Qwen3-30B-A3B, pooling honest runs across A100 and H200 GPUs and parallelism setups broadened the honest score distribution. Token-DiFR then failed 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 did. The authors report that matched provider and verifier environments, or pooling that weights rare large deviations, restore detection. ⁶

  Open question · Minor · Open. On the record

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 “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.
• R1 Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities Add
  • Bears on the open significant flaw “Channels other than checked outputs are outside the bound” in Bounding unexplained information in outputs. Physical side channels need separate suppression, which is this mechanism's purpose.
  • Bounding unexplained information in outputs waits on it. Physical side channels need separate suppression, and one design treats a low residual bandwidth, rather than zero, as the realistic target.
• R2 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.
• R1 Network taps and certifiers Add
  • Bounding unexplained information in outputs depends on it.

Missing prerequisites

• R2 Bandwidth limits and compartmentalization needed by Bounding unexplained information in outputs Add
• R1 Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities needed by Bounding unexplained information in outputs Add
• R1 Network taps and certifiers needed by Bounding unexplained information in outputs Add

Blockers

8 blockers recorded

• 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 ¹
  • 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 ^{2 5}
  • 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 ^{3 5}
  • 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 ¹
  • No prototype of the facility-level architecture exists to red-team. Adversarial validation ¹
• Sampled inference recomputation
  • The verifier needs the model weights, so outsiders cannot use the method to verify providers of closed-weights models. Privacy & leakage ⁶
  • The verifier must know and match the provider's sampling procedure, and in one prototype a sampling mismatch in a newer vLLM version produced large spurious logit differences. Performance & compatibility ^{6 8}
  • No independent red-team of DiFR's consistency check has been published, Amodo rates recomputation red-teaming 'not started', and the one independent attack study targets an exfiltration detector built on the same statistic. Adversarial validation ^{3 10}

From the family or selected implementation's record. ?

Model weights

Depends on the design for Bounding unexplained information in outputs.

Unspecified for Sampled inference recomputation. Check the implementation record.

Inputs and outputs

Depends on the design for Bounding unexplained information in outputs.

Unspecified for Sampled inference recomputation. Check the implementation record.

Training data

Not involved: Bounding unexplained information in outputs.

Unspecified for Sampled inference recomputation. Check the implementation record.

Bounding unexplained information in outputs

None on the map

Sampled inference recomputation

• R1 AI 2040 inference-only verification stack Proposed architecture, AI Futures Project
• R2 DiFR (Divergence From Reference) Research prototype
• 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)
• R3 TOPLOC Open-source project, Prime Intellect

1. Verifying AI Compute by Bounding Unexplained Information Exfiltration, J. Petrie & Y. Mühlhäuser (2026). Original
2. Verifying LLM Inference to Detect Model Weight Exfiltration, R. Rinberg et al. (2025). Original
3. Adversarial Entropy Inflation Against Gumbel-Based Inference Verification, N. Kezins (2026). Original
4. Haiku to Opus in Just 10 bits: LLMs Unlock Large Compression Gains, R. Rinberg et al. (2026). Original
5. A System Overview for Near-Term, Low-Trust AI Compute Verification, N. Cankaya (2026). Original
6. DiFR: Inference Verification Despite Nondeterminism, A. Karvonen et al. (2025). Original
7. adamkarvonen/difr (GitHub repository), A. Karvonen (2025). Original
8. Scaling Recomputation Inference Verification, Amodo Design (2026). Original
9. Amodo-Design/Inference-Recomputation-Prototype (GitHub repository), Amodo Design (2026). Original
10. AI 2040 Plan A — Verification SITREP, Amodo Design (2026). Original
11. An Inference Verification Prototype — Stage 1, Amodo Design (2026). Original
12. Bit-Exact AI Inference Verification Without Performance Tradeoffs, N. Cankaya (2026). Original
13. Example Schemes for Verifying High-Stakes AI Agreements, Amodo Design (2026). Original
14. TOPLOC: A Locality Sensitive Hashing Scheme for Trustless Verifiable Inference, J. M. Ong et al. (2025). Original