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Not all providers on the Darkbloom network carry the same level of cryptographic assurance. The trust level attached to a provider tells you what verification has been performed on its hardware and security configuration — and therefore how strong the privacy guarantee is for requests routed to it. This page explains the two trust levels, how they differ, and what each means for your prompts.

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Trust levels at a glance

self_signed

Verified by Secure Enclave attestation and periodic challenge-response. The provider’s hardware identity is established and its security posture is re-checked every 5 minutes.

hardware

All self_signed checks, plus an Apple Managed Device Attestation certificate chain rooted at Apple’s Enterprise Attestation Root CA. Apple has independently vouched for the device’s integrity.

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self_signed

A self_signed provider has passed the following verification:
  • Its Secure Enclave has produced a hardware-bound P-256 identity and signed an attestation blob. The private key never leaves the enclave and is bound to that specific Mac’s hardware.
  • The coordinator has verified that the provider is running a blessed binary — a build whose SHA-256 hash matches a coordinator-approved release.
  • A periodic challenge-response re-confirms SIP (System Integrity Protection) and Secure Boot status every 5 minutes. If the provider’s security configuration changes, it is removed from routing.
This level provides strong assurance that the provider process cannot be debugged, its memory cannot be read by the Mac owner, and it is running unmodified code. The attestation is self-generated — meaning the cryptographic evidence originates from the device itself rather than from Apple.

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hardware

A hardware provider has passed all self_signed verification, and additionally:
  • An Apple Managed Device Attestation (MDA) certificate chain has been verified, rooted at the Apple Enterprise Attestation Root CA. This certificate chain is issued by Apple and proves that Apple’s infrastructure has independently verified the device’s hardware identity and security posture.
This is the strongest trust level available. The difference from self_signed is that Apple — not just the device itself — has cryptographically vouched for the machine’s integrity. An attacker who somehow compromised the provider binary or the attestation process would also need to forge an Apple-signed certificate chain to appear hardware-attested.

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What the trust level means for your privacy

Both trust levels provide the same runtime protections for your prompts: E2E encryption, Hardened Runtime, SIP-enforced anti-debugging, and binary hash verification. The trust level affects the strength of the attestation evidence backing those claims:
self_signedhardware
Secure Enclave identityYesYes
Binary hash verifiedYesYes
Challenge-response every 5 minYesYes
MDM SecurityInfo checkYesYes
Apple MDA certificate chainNoYes
Apple Enterprise Root CANoYes
You can check the trust level of the provider that served any request using the x-provider-trust-level response header. See Attestation for the full list of per-request trust headers.
self_signed providers still provide meaningful privacy protection. The Secure Enclave and periodic challenge-response together make it cryptographically difficult — though not impossible — to mount an attestation forgery. hardware providers add Apple’s independent verification on top of this.