arXiv:2403.14023 — A system capable of verifiably and privately screening global DNA synthesis
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SecureDNA presents a privacy-preserving system for screening DNA synthesis orders against threat databases, addressing biosecurity risks from dual-use biotechnology while maintaining customer privacy—relevant to AI safety's focus on preventing misuse of powerful technologies.
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This paper presents SecureDNA, a privacy-preserving system for screening DNA synthesis orders against a database of controlled sequences to prevent misuse of DNA synthesis technology. The system addresses the biosecurity challenge of preventing unauthorized synthesis of dangerous pathogens while maintaining customer privacy and enabling rapid updates to threat databases. The authors describe the system's architecture, demonstrate its operational performance on 67 million nucleotides synthesized across US, European, and Chinese providers, and show it can effectively identify problematic sequences while maintaining high specificity and protecting legitimate research.
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| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| SecureDNA | Organization | 60.0 |
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[2403.14023] A system capable of verifiably and privately screening global DNA synthesis
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Computer Science > Cryptography and Security
arXiv:2403.14023 (cs)
[Submitted on 20 Mar 2024 ( v1 ), last revised 30 Jun 2025 (this version, v3)]
Title: A system capable of verifiably and privately screening global DNA synthesis
Authors: Carsten Baum (1 and 2), Jens Berlips (3), Walther Chen (3), Helena Cozzarini (3), Hongrui Cui (4), Ivan Damgård (1), Jiangbin Dong (5), Kevin M. Esvelt (3 and 6), Leonard Foner (3), Mingyu Gao (5 and 12), Dana Gretton (3 and 6), Martin Kysel (3), Juanru Li (4), Xiang Li (5), Omer Paneth (7), Ronald L. Rivest (7), Francesca Sage-Ling (3), Adi Shamir (8), Yue Shen (10), Meicen Sun (11), Vinod Vaikuntanathan (7), Lynn Van Hauwe (3), Theia Vogel (3), Benjamin Weinstein-Raun (3), Yun Wang (10), Daniel Wichs (9), Stephen Wooster (3), Andrew C. Yao (3 and 5 and 12), Yu Yu (4 and 12), Haoling Zhang (10), Kaiyi Zhang (4) ((1) Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Denmark, (2) DTU Compute, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark, (3) SecureDNA Foundation, Switzerland, (4) Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, (5) Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua University, China, (6) Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, (7) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, (8) Department of Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, (9) Department of Computer Science, Northeastern University, USA, (10) China National GeneBank, China, (11) Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, (12) Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute, China) View a PDF of the paper titled A system capable of verifiably and privately screening global DNA synthesis, by Carsten Baum (1 and 2) and 62 other authors
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Abstract: Printing custom DNA sequences is essential to scientific and biomedical research, but the technology can be used to manufacture plagues as well as cures. Just as ink printers recognize and reject attempts to counterfeit money, DNA synthesizers and assemblers should deny unauthorized requests to make viral DNA that could be misused. There are three complications. First, we don't need to quickly update printers to deal with newly discovered currencies, whereas we regularly learn of new potential pandemic viruses and other biological threats. Second, convincing counterfeit bills can't be printed in small pieces and taped together, while preventing the distributed synthesis and subsequent re-assembly of controlled sequences will require tracking which DNA fragments have been ordered across all providers and benchtop devices while protecting legitimate customer privacy. Finally, counterfeiting can at worst undermine fait
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