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arXiv · 2511.00973

Keys in the Weights: Transformer Authentication Using Model-Bound Latent Representations

Ayşe S. Okatan·Mustafa İlhan Akbaş·Laxima Niure Kandel·Berker Peköz
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Abstract

We introduce Model-Bound Latent Exchange (MoBLE), a decoder-binding property in Transformer autoencoders formalized as Zero-Shot Decoder Non-Transferability (ZSDN). In identity tasks using iso-architectural models trained on identical data but differing in seeds, self-decoding achieves more than 0.91 exact match and 0.98 token accuracy, while zero-shot cross-decoding collapses to chance without exact matches. This separation arises without injected secrets or adversarial training, and is corroborated by weight-space distances and attention-divergence diagnostics. We interpret ZSDN as model binding, a latent-based authentication and access-control mechanism, even when the architecture and training recipe are public: encoder's hidden state representation deterministically reveals the plaintext, yet only the correctly keyed decoder reproduces it in zero-shot. We formally define ZSDN, a decoder-binding advantage metric, and outline deployment considerations for secure artificial intelligence (AI) pipelines. Finally, we discuss learnability risks (e.g., adapter alignment) and outline mitigations. MoBLE offers a lightweight, accelerator-friendly approach to secure AI deployment in safety-critical domains, including aviation and cyber-physical systems.

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Ayşe S. Okatan, Mustafa İlhan Akbaş, Laxima Niure Kandel, Berker Peköz. 2025-11-02. Keys in the Weights: Transformer Authentication Using Model-Bound Latent Representations. https://doi.org/10.1109/cars67163.2025.11337776

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