Foundation on Nostr: Thank you so much to those who have been submitting AI security reports to us over ...
Thank you so much to those who have been submitting AI security reports to us over the last few days, especially Rob Hamilton. Since Thursday evening we have been engaged in internal code review and hardening.
We have confirmed that seed generation in all Passport models is secure. By design, Passport models use at least 2 sources of entropy (randomness).
Typically we don't post deeply technical updates, but given the events of the last few days, we will continue to post technical updates about our FOSS codebases.
All Passport models include three sources of randomness:
(1) Avalanche noise source (ANS), an open architecture true random number generator (no black box silicon)
(2) MCU or MPU true random number generator (TRNG) depending on the model
(3) Secure Element TRNG
Passport Core uses all three sources when generating seeds. Multiple parties reported a scenario, which we also identified during our internal review on Thursday evening, where a theoretical ANS hardware failure would cause Passport Core to continue seed generation using the MCU and Secure Element TRNGs.
(We are not aware of any ANS hardware failure in any Passport Core unit)
Some AI models, specifically Kimi, are confused about this scenario and are falsely reporting that in the case of ANS hardware failure there is no additional entropy added. This is false. In this scenario, the Foundation team has confirmed that Passport Core still incorporates 2 sources of entropy during seed generation.
Two sources provide more than sufficient entropy. But the better behavior is to instead refuse to generate the seed at all if the ANS fails. So we are hardening the code accordingly.
Additionally, Passport Prime currently uses two sources of entropy for seed generation: ANS and MPU TRNG. We have confirmed that this seed generation path is secure. This is more than sufficient entropy but we are also adding in the Secure Element TRNG to the seed generation process.
The Secure Element TRNG introduces some latency (it is slower) but we have always intended to use it as a third source of entropy for seed generation on Passport Prime. We have already made this code change internally.
We will be releasing firmware updates in the coming days. All seeds generated on Passport hardware are safe. Please let us know what questions you have.
Published at
2026-08-02 17:39:10 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "Thank you so much to those who have been submitting AI security reports to us over the last few days, especially Rob Hamilton. Since Thursday evening we have been engaged in internal code review and hardening. \n\nWe have confirmed that seed generation in all Passport models is secure. By design, Passport models use at least 2 sources of entropy (randomness).\n\nTypically we don't post deeply technical updates, but given the events of the last few days, we will continue to post technical updates about our FOSS codebases.\n\nAll Passport models include three sources of randomness:\n(1) Avalanche noise source (ANS), an open architecture true random number generator (no black box silicon)\n(2) MCU or MPU true random number generator (TRNG) depending on the model\n(3) Secure Element TRNG\n\nPassport Core uses all three sources when generating seeds. Multiple parties reported a scenario, which we also identified during our internal review on Thursday evening, where a theoretical ANS hardware failure would cause Passport Core to continue seed generation using the MCU and Secure Element TRNGs.\n\n(We are not aware of any ANS hardware failure in any Passport Core unit)\n\nSome AI models, specifically Kimi, are confused about this scenario and are falsely reporting that in the case of ANS hardware failure there is no additional entropy added. This is false. In this scenario, the Foundation team has confirmed that Passport Core still incorporates 2 sources of entropy during seed generation.\n\nTwo sources provide more than sufficient entropy. But the better behavior is to instead refuse to generate the seed at all if the ANS fails. So we are hardening the code accordingly. \n\nAdditionally, Passport Prime currently uses two sources of entropy for seed generation: ANS and MPU TRNG. We have confirmed that this seed generation path is secure. This is more than sufficient entropy but we are also adding in the Secure Element TRNG to the seed generation process. \n\nThe Secure Element TRNG introduces some latency (it is slower) but we have always intended to use it as a third source of entropy for seed generation on Passport Prime. We have already made this code change internally.\n\nWe will be releasing firmware updates in the coming days. All seeds generated on Passport hardware are safe. Please let us know what questions you have.",
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