Rendering on Real Silicon: GPU Render-Timing as a Passive, AI-Resistant CAPTCHA Signal
Conventional CAPTCHAs pose puzzles that modern AI systems increasingly solve, while behavioral and cryptographic-attestation defenses carry privacy or enrollment costs. We investigate an orthogonal signal: the physical timing behavior of a client's GPU under a controlled WebGL rendering workload. Unlike WebGL fingerprinting, which hashes pixel output into a static device identifier, we measure render-timing dynamics to classify rather than identify, leaking no persistent identifier. We characterize the in-the-wild adversary with a 12-hour passive deployment (207 unsolicited requests; 86% automated; 85% of browser-claiming clients failed HTTP header-consistency checks). We then collect lab...
| Authors | David Noever, Forrest McKee |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CR |
| Published | 25 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 25 July 2026 |
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