Pith Number

pith:MR2ZJUVF

pith:2026:MR2ZJUVFMTTCHJZEQ6TBYDLAD6

not attested not anchored not stored refs pending

Cryptographic Registry Provenance: Structural Defense Against Dependency Confusion in AI Package Ecosystems

Alan L. McCann

A cryptographic system with registry Ed25519 identities, dual publisher-registry signatures, and consumer-pinned fingerprints creates three independent layers that must all be breached for a dependency confusion attack to succeed.

arxiv:2605.03309 v2 · 2026-05-05 · cs.CR · cs.AI · cs.SE

Open paper page JSON Open Graph Bundle Merged state Verified badge What is a Pith Number?

Add to your LaTeX paper

\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{MR2ZJUVFMTTCHJZEQ6TBYDLAD6}

Prints a linked badge after your title and injects PDF metadata. Compiles on arXiv. Learn more · Embed verified badge

Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

✓ Portable graph bundle live · download bundle · merged state

The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

These create three defense layers requiring simultaneous compromise for a successful attack. A comparison across eight ecosystems shows no existing ecosystem combines mandatory publisher signing, cryptographic registry identity, mandatory registry countersigning, and consumer-side cryptographic enforcement.

C2weakest assumption

That registries will universally adopt and maintain Ed25519 keypairs, that publishers will sign at packaging time, and that consumers will correctly pin registry fingerprints in their resolvers; the system fails if any layer is not enforced.

C3one line summary

A three-layer cryptographic system with registry identity, dual signatures, and authoritative binding prevents dependency confusion by requiring simultaneous compromise of publisher, registry, and consumer controls.

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-27T01:05:56.143153Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

647594d2a564e623a72487a61c0d601fa89aa25d24cd983413b0288ec207cff6

Aliases

arxiv: 2605.03309 · arxiv_version: 2605.03309v2 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2605.03309 · pith_short_12: MR2ZJUVFMTTC · pith_short_16: MR2ZJUVFMTTCHJZE · pith_short_8: MR2ZJUVF

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/MR2ZJUVFMTTCHJZEQ6TBYDLAD6 \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 647594d2a564e623a72487a61c0d601fa89aa25d24cd983413b0288ec207cff6

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "63b5879e6ddfcbf23fc7074c5c3f199e8a4ad32e7ba2e645a8de249d0796f44c",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [
      "cs.AI",
      "cs.SE"
    ],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/",
    "primary_cat": "cs.CR",
    "submitted_at": "2026-05-05T02:56:31Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "dda8c12c2f635da36666a43cb977b91357151411b12e103e95b435b55a612736"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2605.03309",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 2
  }
}