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Posted by twapi 1 day ago

Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs(darkbloom.dev)
478 points | 236 commentspage 6
DeathArrow 1 day ago|
Why only Macs? If we think of all PCs and mobile phones running idle, the potential is much larger.
btown 1 day ago||
From the paper: https://github.com/Layr-Labs/d-inference/blob/master/papers/...

> Apple’s attestation servers will only generate the FreshnessCode for a genuine device that checks in via APNs. A software-only adversary cannot forge the MDA certificate chain (Assumption 3). Com- bined with SIP enforcement (preventing binary replace- ment) and Secure Boot (preventing bootloader tampering), this provides strong evidence that the signing key resides in genuine Apple hardware.

saagarjha 1 day ago||
I am not entirely sure they understand that System Integrity Protection and Secure Boot can be turned off.
btown 17 hours ago|||
My understanding from the paper is that doing so should cause certain things in Apple's hardware security enclaves to break a signing chain, and a server-side MDM system integrated with Apple servers can detect this. But I'm not familiar with the underlying technology, so not sure if underlying assumptions are incorrect.
nl 1 day ago|||
They use the Apple TEE which they claim also protects GPU memory (I wasn't aware of this).

NVidia data center GPUs have a similar path, but not their consumer ones. Not sure about the NVidia Spark.

It's possible AMD Strix Halo can do this, but unlikely for any other PC based GPU environments.

MrDrMcCoy 1 day ago||
Epyc has that VM encrypted memory thing, which comes pretty close. It does raise an interesting question, though: would a PCIe card passed through to a VM be able to DMA access the memory of neighboring devices?
stryakr 1 day ago||
simple first target, PCs have more variability
subpixel 21 hours ago||
Why isn’t a MacBook Air M5 on the hardware list?
ianpurton 21 hours ago||
Because the model that generated that list was trained before the M5 came out.
chakintosh 21 hours ago||
no fans
grvbck 22 hours ago||
Broken calculator or am I missing something here?

  Macbook Air M2  8GB   12h/day -> $647/month

  Mac Mini M4     32GB  12h/day -> $290/month
I mean, I'd be happy to buy a few used M2 Airs with minimal specs and start printing money but…
autodidacticon 11 hours ago||
bittensor has something to say about this
bprasanna 20 hours ago||
Like Fold@home but for profit!
egorfine 23 hours ago||
I really want this to succeed
dcreater 1 day ago||
I cant buy credits - says page could not load
logicallee 16 hours ago||
It's a good project that makes sense. I recommend adding a contractual layer as well, since it's free and makes sense. Operators could legally sign that they will not look into the inference layer. After all, the operators already have a financial relationship with this provider, so it makes sense to add a contract to it and keep operators from looking into other people's data that way, too. I wish this project a lot of success.
Fokamul 21 hours ago|
Thanks, if this takse off. I have finally some motivation to do exploitation in kernel. :)
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