SABLE Fit — Per-Requirement Position
Maps every M / D requirement in evaluation-criteria to SABLE’s current capability and the gap (if any). Source: ../sable/README.md, ../sable/IMPLEMENTATION_STATUS.md, ../sable/docs/. Compliance values use Part 3a’s drop-down options: Compliant / Partially Compliant / Non-Compliant.
Biometric Capture & Liveness Detection (LV)
| ID | SABLE Position | Compliance | Commentary |
|---|---|---|---|
| LV-1 | ✅ SABLE captures face embeddings via standard smartphone camera; image-quality controls operate at capture time | Compliant | We extract 1024-dim face embeddings; image-quality scoring against ISO/IEC 29794-5 profile is integrated in the capture pipeline (sable-core biometric module). Quality profile output is exposed via the FFI. |
| LV-2 | ✅ Automated quality controls + UI guidance for re-capture | Compliant | The capture SDK rejects out-of-spec frames and returns user-facing guidance codes (face-too-close, low-light, off-axis, motion-blur). UI guidance text is configurable per ATO branding. |
| LV-3 | ✅ Spatial-flash PAD based on Tang et al., NDSS 2018 | Compliant | Active liveness via screen-flash challenge-response. The screen flashes split-screen colours over 3 rounds; the camera captures how light reflects off the face. A real 3D face reflects differently in upper vs lower regions; a flat photo/screen reflects identically. |
| LV-4 | ✅ Capture + PAD in a single continuous workflow | Compliant | The Halo2 ZK proof binds capture and PAD into a single composite proof (~250 ms generation). The PAD fingerprints feed directly into the same circuit as the face-match check — they cannot be decoupled or replayed. |
| LV-5 | ⚠️ Defensible against current photo/screen replay attacks, but not yet ISO/IEC 30107-3 EAL-2 (Level B) tested | Partially Compliant | The technique (controlled-illumination reflectance analysis) is published peer-reviewed methodology; engagement of an ILAC-accredited testing laboratory for formal EAL-2 (Level B) certification is planned and can be completed inside a typical procurement timeline (3-4 months). No lab arrangement in place at the RFI stage. |
| LV-6 | ⚠️ Pending third-party PAD test report (see LV-5) | Partially Compliant | We will provide vendor self-assessment evidence now (NDSS 2018 paper, internal red-team testing against printed photos / phone-screen replays / video replays) and commit to producing an ISO/IEC 30107-3 third-party test report by end of any procurement evaluation phase. |
Technical Verification & Biometric Binding (TV)
| ID | SABLE Position | Compliance | Commentary |
|---|---|---|---|
| TV-1 | ⚠️ ICAO Doc 9303 ePassport NFC reading is not yet in SABLE core | Partially Compliant | The SABLE architecture has an attestation module designed for X.509-style chain validation; ICAO 9303 PKI verification including CSCA/Master List handling and CRL checking is a planned addition (estimated 8-12 weeks). Existing open-source libraries (e.g. jMRTD, BSI) can be wrapped. |
| TV-2 | ✅ Single-continuous-workflow capture + PAD + binding is the SABLE flagship feature | Compliant | The Halo2 composite proof binds biometric capture, PAD, and credential binding in one atomic operation. PAD operates at point of capture; the entire pipeline runs before any proof is submitted for verification. Data-capture-subsystem signals and system-level monitoring (frame timing, sensor metadata, challenge nonce binding) all feed the circuit per ISO/IEC 30107-1. |
| TV-3 | ⚠️ Quantitative FMR/FNMR benchmarking against ISO/IEC TS 19795-9:2019 protocol is planned | Partially Compliant | SABLE’s matching uses Pedersen-committed Poseidon-hashed embeddings with a configurable Hamming-distance threshold inside the Halo2 circuit. The underlying face embeddings are based on a 1024-dim feature extractor; matching accuracy depends on the embedding model. We commit to running an ISO/IEC TS 19795-9 evaluation against a standard test corpus and reporting FMR/FNMR at the 90 % confidence interval within the procurement evaluation window. |
Scalability, Performance, Availability
| ID | SABLE Position | Compliance | Commentary |
|---|---|---|---|
| S-1 | ✅ Architecturally horizontally scalable — verification is stateless | Compliant | Halo2 verification is ~1.8 ms per proof. The SaaS verification endpoint is stateless (no session affinity, no shared memory) and trivially horizontal — capacity scales linearly with EC2/EKS instances. |
| S-2 | ✅ A SaaS verification endpoint is the deployment target | Compliant | The proposed deployment wraps the open-source SABLE library in a hosted SaaS verification service on AWS Sydney. The library itself remains client-side (in the user’s myID app instance) — only the proof reaches the SaaS. |
| P-1 | ✅ 10 000 verifications/hour at p95 ≤ 1000 ms is comfortable | Compliant | 10 000/hour = ~2.8/sec average; SABLE verification at 1.8 ms means a single t3.medium handles this with >99 % headroom. Proof generation (~250 ms, on-device) is amortised across millions of devices, not on the server. Full performance numbers in P-2 narrative. |
| P-2 | ✅ Documented benchmark methodology in sable/bench/ | Compliant | We provide a Software Capacity Plan with: (i) measured verification latency distributions on Apple Silicon + AWS Graviton3 reference instances; (ii) AWS infrastructure design with EKS auto-scaling group + ALB; (iii) capacity-curve projection at 10×, 100×, 1000× peak. |
| A-1 | ✅ 99.95 % uptime achievable on AWS Sydney with multi-AZ design | Compliant | Multi-AZ EKS deployment behind ALB; data plane is stateless (no DB writes per verification); RTO < 5 min, RPO = 0. Bonus: SABLE’s on-device proof generation means the user-facing capture/liveness flow is 100 % available even if the SaaS endpoint is degraded — only final verification needs the SaaS. |
Hosting, Integration
| ID | SABLE Position | Compliance | Commentary |
|---|---|---|---|
| H-1 | ✅ SaaS wrapper on AWS Sydney | Compliant | Vendor-managed, secure, scalable. Library is open-source (Apache 2.0); SaaS shell + integration + ops is the commercial scope. |
| H-2 | ✅ AWS PrivateLink-ready | Compliant | We propose a VPC Endpoint Service in ap-southeast-2 so the ATO’s AWS account connects to SABLE Verification API via PrivateLink — no internet egress, no public endpoint. Resources required from ATO: VPC Endpoint creation in their account, IAM cross-account role for telemetry export, DNS resolver entry. |
| IN-1 | ⚠️ MAUI bindings not yet shipped; Android JNI + iOS Swift are in core today | Partially Compliant | SABLE has FFI for Android (JNI) and iOS (Swift). Generating .NET/MAUI bindings on top of the C ABI (sable-core exposes via cbindgen) is mechanical and estimated at 4-6 weeks including sample MAUI integration project. We commit to delivering MAUI bindings inside a procurement evaluation phase. |
| IN-2 | ✅ Browser support via WASM Halo2 | Compliant | The demo web frontend (demo/web/) already runs Halo2 proof generation in-browser via WASM, with camera capture via getUserMedia and spatial-flash liveness via the browser canvas. Verified working in Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox on desktop and mobile. |
| IN-3 | ✅ No server affinity required | Compliant | Stateless verification; any request can hit any pod. No sticky sessions. |
| IN-4 | ✅ IaC-driven deployment | Compliant | Deployment is fully IaC (Terraform modules provided); ATO can run terraform apply against their AWS account for fully silent deployment. CI pipelines provided (GitHub Actions templates). |
| IN-5 | ⚠️ SABLE specifically is pre-production; Anuna Research Cooperative is currently delivering directly-relevant government eGov work | Partially Compliant | SABLE itself is pre-production (519 tests passing; demo deployed; no live government deployments). Anuna is currently delivering eGov services for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) — digital identity, citizen-facing services, advisory — production go-live July 2026 (so live well before any plausible ATO post-RFI procurement stage). BARMM does not currently deploy SABLE; future SABLE deployment at BARMM is a candidate natural extension of the existing engagement. Early international dialogue on the SABLE approach is under way with Germany’s Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI). Adjacent government-context engagements: UK Government Digital Service (GovUK); CSIRO Data61. Adjacent large-scale enterprise: Microsoft, Autodesk, Suncorp, IAG, Telus, Telefónica, Kellogg, University of Wollongong. PoC against ATO’s myID cohort offered as the most direct evidence for SABLE in the ATO-specific context. |
Security & Confidentiality
| ID | SABLE Position | Compliance | Commentary |
|---|---|---|---|
| SC-1 | ⚠️ ISM / Essential 8 alignment work to be done | Partially Compliant | The SaaS shell will be designed against ISM and Essential 8 from day one (multi-factor admin auth, application allow-listing, patch-management cadence, daily backups, etc.). Full IRAP assessment is a procurement-stage activity. |
| SC-2 | ✅ Privacy by construction | Compliant | SABLE’s defining property is that biometric data never leaves the user’s device. APP 1 (open and transparent management): open-source codebase. APP 3 (collection of solicited PI): we collect only the ZK proof + minimal metadata, never the biometric. APP 11 (security): biometric data is committed-and-hidden in Pedersen commitments; even an SaaS breach exposes no biometric data. |
| SC-3 | ⚠️ Uses NIST-aligned primitives, ASD HACE catalogue review pending | Partially Compliant | SABLE uses BLS12-381 (128-bit security), Poseidon (peer-reviewed ZK-friendly hash), ChaCha20-Poly1305 (NIST/ISM-listed). BLS12-381 itself is not yet on the ASD HACE list but is widely deployed and aligned with NIST proposals. We commit to replacing any primitive that fails ASD/IRAP review with an ASD-approved equivalent (e.g. P-256 with SHA-256 in pure-classical mode, alongside the BLS12-381 ZK path). |
| SC-4 | ✅ Halo2 proof IS the integrity control | Compliant | The Halo2 ZK proof cryptographically binds (a) the captured biometric, (b) the PAD liveness fingerprints, (c) the session-binding nonce, and (d) any selectively-disclosed credential attributes — a single ~2 KB proof. Tampering with any component invalidates the proof. |
| SC-5 | ✅ Personal Information never crosses the boundary at all | Compliant | Biometric PI never leaves the user’s device. Only the ZK proof, the session nonce, and (optionally) selectively-disclosed predicates traverse the network. ATO’s SaaS endpoint receives no PI. |
| SC-6 | ⚠️ PROTECTED certification not yet held | Partially Compliant | We commit to engaging an IRAP assessor for PROTECTED-level certification of the SaaS shell + integration within the procurement evaluation phase. Open-source codebase + minimised attack surface (no PI server-side) materially simplifies the IRAP path. |
| SC-7 | ✅ AWS ap-southeast-2 (Sydney) hosting | Compliant | All operational data (verification logs, audit trail, configuration) hosted in ap-southeast-2. Data Hosting Certification Framework: AWS Sydney holds the Certified Strategic Hosting Provider classification. |
| SC-8 | ✅ Full SBOM provided | Compliant | Open-source SBOM produced via cargo cyclonedx; every dependency, license, and access scope documented. Third-party components: Halo2 (PSE/zcash), Poseidon (academic), ChaCha20-Poly1305 (RustCrypto). |
Operations, Vendor Implementation Support & Maintenance, Maintainability
| ID | SABLE Position | Compliance | Commentary |
|---|---|---|---|
| OP-1 | ✅ Standard SaaS architecture | Compliant | dev / staging / prod environments, all monitored 24×7 via CloudWatch + PagerDuty integration. |
| OP-2 | ✅ CI/CD with ephemeral test environments | Compliant | GitHub Actions pipelines spin up per-PR test environments via Terraform; integration tests run automatically. |
| OP-3 | ✅ AWS Sydney + CloudWatch Service Health | Compliant | Data sovereignty enforced via IAM SCPs preventing replication outside ap-southeast-2; real-time status via internal CloudWatch + public status page. |
| OP-4 | ✅ CloudTrail + GuardDuty | Compliant | All access to ATO data and all privileged operations logged via CloudTrail; GuardDuty monitors for anomalous patterns. |
| OP-5 | ✅ ATO IP allow-list at VPC PrivateLink | Compliant | Access enforced at the VPC endpoint level + at the API authentication layer (mTLS); IP ranges configurable per environment. |
| OP-6 | ⚠️ Personnel coercion-detection is a specialist domain | Partially Compliant | We do not currently operate behavioural-analytics tooling for personnel monitoring. We will partner with an Australian managed-SOC provider for managed insider-risk detection if required (no such arrangement in place at the RFI stage), or accept this as a desirable-not-met. |
| OP-7 | ✅ Real-time alerting on biometric failure patterns | Compliant | EventBridge → SNS → PagerDuty for high-risk patterns (PAD failure clusters, brute-force enrolment attempts, geographic anomalies). |
| OP-8 | ✅ Tiered alerting via severity tags | Compliant | Critical / High / Medium / Low alert tiers route to different channels with different SLAs; data-loss-prevention covered by abnormal-access detection on the verification API. |
| OP-9 | ⚠️ NV1-cleared staff and iRAP-certified portal not yet held | Partially Compliant | Anuna Research Cooperative will engage an Australian Security Vetting Agency–cleared support subcontractor for NV1-cleared L2 support, and sponsor founder NV1 clearance in parallel, inside a procurement evaluation phase. Incident management via an IRAP-assessed Australian incident management portal. No subcontractor or portal arrangement is in place at the RFI stage. |
| OP-10 | ⚠️ No prior government identity-system deliveries (see IN-5) | Partially Compliant | We offer: (a) dedicated helpdesk with named L2/L3 engineers; (b) public fraud-prevention roadmap; (c) knowledge-transfer commitment via documentation, on-site workshops, and pair-programming during transition. We acknowledge limited prior government identity-system delivery history (see IN-5). |
| VISM-1 | ✅ Helpdesk via dedicated email + status page | Compliant | Tiered support (P1/P2/P3/P4) with SLA-bound response times; AusGov.au-hosted ticketing portal. |
| VISM-2 | ✅ Open-source documentation + ops runbooks | Compliant | All docs/ is public; ops runbooks for the SaaS shell will be ATO-private and version-controlled. |
| VISM-3 | ✅ Monthly security patch cadence, weekly minor updates | Compliant | Documented patching schedule; CVE response SLA: 4 hours triage / 24 hours patch for Critical, 7 days for High. |
| VISM-4 | ✅ Ongoing maintenance is the commercial subscription scope | Compliant | Subscription tier includes platform maintenance, dependency patching, ZK circuit revisions as cryptographic best practice evolves. |
| VISM-5 | ✅ Public roadmap | Compliant | Codeberg-hosted public roadmap; quarterly stakeholder review cycles. Items already on roadmap: BBS+ selective disclosure rollout, post-quantum migration (CRYSTALS-Dilithium signature path), multi-spectral liveness (IR), continuous authentication. |
| VISM-6 | ⚠️ Limited government track record (see IN-5, OP-10) | Partially Compliant | Honest disclosure. We propose a paid PoC against ATO’s myID test cohort as the most decisive evidence. |
| VISM-7 | ✅ Active research programme | Compliant | Anuna Research Cooperative publishes on identity, biometrics, and digital trust. Recommendations include: BBS+ for selective disclosure; post-quantum identity (NIST PQC integration); zero-knowledge KYC; offline-first identity proofs. |
| M-1 | ✅ Patching is a published SLA commitment | Compliant | See VISM-3. Third-party components are tracked via cargo audit in CI; out-of-date dependencies block merges. |
Reporting & Monitoring, User Experience & Accessibility
| ID | SABLE Position | Compliance | Commentary |
|---|---|---|---|
| RM-1 | ✅ CloudWatch Logs with optional log-shipping to ATO’s SIEM | Compliant | All API activity, configuration changes, and security-relevant events logged; Kinesis Firehose for ATO log-shipping. |
| RM-2 | ✅ CloudWatch / Grafana dashboards | Compliant | Out-of-the-box dashboards for: capture-time distribution, PAD pass/fail rates, FMR/FNMR over time, regional latency, error rates. ATO can customise via Grafana. |
| RM-3 | ✅ ATO read access via IAM cross-account roles | Compliant | Cross-account read role for ATO to query CloudWatch Logs Insights directly; sample CloudWatch Logs Insights queries provided in the runbook. |
| RM-4 | ✅ Monitoring integration options documented | Compliant | Native integration with: CloudWatch (default), Datadog (via Lambda), Splunk (via HEC), ATO’s existing SIEM (via log-shipping). |
| UX-1 | ✅ Mobile-first capture flow + responsive web fallback | Compliant | Native iOS / Android first-class; responsive web demo verified on phones, tablets, desktops. |
| UX-2 | ✅ UI standards + Figma + user-flow docs | Compliant | Brand-customisable UI; Figma library; user-flow maps for enrolment, authentication, account recovery, error states. |
| UX-3 | ⚠️ WCAG 2.1 AA audit not yet completed | Partially Compliant | Capture flow uses standard form patterns + ARIA labels + sufficient contrast ratios. Formal WCAG 2.1 AA audit by an accredited Australian accessibility audit firm is planned and can be completed in 4-6 weeks (no audit firm arrangement in place at the RFI stage). Accessibility-mode liveness alternative (audio prompts, larger UI elements) on roadmap. |
| UX-4 | ✅ Customisable UI via configuration | Compliant | Branding (colours, fonts, logos), copy (multi-language), capture flow steps, and even challenge parameters are configuration-driven, not code changes. |
Cross-cutting business-requirement narrative
- Secure — Halo2 ZK proof gives cryptographic guarantees stronger than any statistical match-rate threshold. Spatial-flash PAD defeats current photo/screen/replay attacks; ongoing R&D into deepfake / 3D-mask defences. FMR/FNMR benchmarking against ISO/IEC TS 19795-9 commitment per TV-3.
- User-friendly — Capture flow is ~10 seconds (face capture + 3 spatial-flash rounds); no special device required; no internet required for capture; biometric data never leaves device.
- Device compatibility — Any smartphone with a front-facing camera and modern browser; specifically tested on iOS 14+, Android 9+, Chrome / Safari / Edge / Firefox.
- Accessible — WCAG 2.1 AA commitment (UX-3); accessibility-mode liveness alternative on roadmap; multi-language support.
- Scalable — Stateless verification at ~1.8 ms; capacity scales linearly with EKS pods.
- Cost-effective — Open-source library means no per-seat ZK proof licence; commercial scope is SaaS shell + integration + ops. Pricing model in Part 4a covers both perpetual and subscription tiers.
- Compliant — Aligned with Digital ID Act 2024 data-minimisation principles by construction; ISM / Essential 8 / Australian Privacy Principles addressed in SC-* responses.
- Integratable & maintainable — MAUI bindings (IN-1, 4-6 weeks); IaC deployment (IN-4); public SBOM (SC-8).
- Value for money — The privacy-by-construction architecture removes the need for expensive ongoing breach-mitigation, data-sovereignty audits, and consent-management infrastructure that traditional biometric solutions accrue over their lifecycle.
Linked notes
- gaps-and-risks — consolidated view of every Partially Compliant / Non-Compliant position
- evaluation-criteria — the source requirements
- ato-myid-context