KBF: Knowledge Boundary as Fingerprint for Language Model and Black-Box API Auditing

arXiv:2605.29524v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Relay and reseller APIs mediate access to large language models (LLMs), but users cannot directly verify which model serves them. We introduce \name, a black-box auditing protocol based on stable factual recall near the knowledge boundary, including repeatable wrong answers. KBF generates benign, renewable probes and calibrates audit decisions against reference self-variation. Across 16 production endpoints, KBF detects all 155 economically relevant substitutions without rejecting any of the 16 same-reference controls. KBF remains robust to deployment variation and reaches 95\% TPR at a substitution rate as low as 15\% in mixed-routing simulations. Field audits flag 7 of 28 endpoints across six platforms as statistically inconsistent with their references. After reference enrollment, even GPT-6 Astra costs only approximately \$0.67 per online audit at the recorded API prices.