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Life sciences · Preprint
arXiv · September 8, 2026
Early or partial results. Treat as a signal, not a conclusion.
ZK-Trace is a cryptographic and statistical framework combining Tardos fingerprints and zero-knowledge credentials to trace model leakage in federated GNSS monitoring without leaker cooperation. Proof-of-concept experiments on simulated GNSS and CIFAR-10 show successful isolation of 160 single-owner copies and tracing of 712 of 720 two-owner mixtures with a false-naming budget of 0.001, but the method remains unvalidated in real federated deployments or clinical systems.
Methods paper with simulation-based validation and algorithmic proof-of-concept. Simulated federated monitoring stations; CIFAR-10 benchmark dataset. Not a real federated deployment or patient study.. Intervention: ZK-Trace fingerprinting and zero-knowledge credential framework for model-leakage tracing.. Not applicable; simulation-based study with no geographic deployment..
All 160 single-owner copies isolated without false accusation under innocent-row independence. 712 of 720 two-owner mixtures traced without naming an innocent (98.9% success rate on two-owner cases). False-naming budget of 0.001 per investigation under certificate-based evaluation.
Safety was not reported in the material analysed. Check the source before drawing any conclusion about harm.
The source did not state who this applies to in practice.
Early-stage algorithmic and cryptographic framework validated on simulated GNSS data and standard benchmarks, demonstrating proof-of-concept for fingerprint-based model tracing but not yet deployed in real federated systems or clinical contexts.
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Federated global navigation satellite system (GNSS) monitoring distributes a proprietary classifier to partly trusted stations, any of which may leak its copy. ZK-Trace combines public identity marks, recipient-specific Tardos fingerprints, and zero-knowledge credential verification. The registry supports offline tracing without the leaker's cooperation. We establish conditional false-accusation bounds for arbitrary recovered bit patterns, a finite completeness bound under a hidden-bias residual channel, and a deterministic tracing-score bound for correlated feature-distillation errors. An interval-arithmetic checker makes the conditional bound executable and allocates a common budget across accusation and tamper decisions. Under innocent-row independence, the certificate-based evaluation uses a false-naming budget of 0.001 per investigation. It isolates all 160 single-owner copies and traces 712 of 720 two-owner mixtures without naming an innocent. Experiments use a simulated GNSS federation and CIFAR-10. Feature matching preserves the feature mark in 20/20 runs and cross-architecture transfer in 19/20, at copy-accuracy costs of 4.8 and 6.1 percentage points on GNSS and CIFAR-10. Function-only distillation erases the feature mark, and distillation also removes weight-space marks. These results support verifiable tracing under explicit statistical and cryptographic assumptions. Credential knowledge and recipient evidence serve distinct roles.
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