Use Cases

Build from ground truth.

Account takeover, business email compromise, synthetic identity, payment fraud: each one needs a faked location, because an attacker can steal everything except where the real user is. The credentials match. The location does not. Sanctions screening, securities offerings, content licensing, licensed betting: in each case, legality depends on the location of the user. Octet replaces guesswork with a hardware-signed predicate against the policy you set.

Jurisdictional compliance and geofencing.

A sanctions screen runs on an IP address and a country code from a dropdown. A five-dollar VPN defeats it. Major IP geolocation databases disagree on the same address by an average of 620 kilometres. The largest sanctions fine in banking history was $8.9 billion (BNP Paribas, 2014). A recent one was $4.3 billion (Binance, 2023), and the CEO did prison time. OFAC violations are strict liability. Octet replaces the IP heuristic with a hardware-signed predicate over presence.

01.01

Sanctioned jurisdiction blocking

OFAC and EU restrictive measures impose strict liability. 71M people in sanctioned jurisdictions live within 100 km of a border with a non-sanctioned territory. 168M people in sanctioned jurisdictions live within 200 km of a border with a non-sanctioned territory. But IP databases disagree on the same address by an average of 620 km, so an IP lookup will easily place well over a hundred million individuals in sanctioned jurisdictions in the wrong (unsanctioned) country.

Octet attests directly to the device's presence relative to the named polygon set. A regulator asking for evidence gets a signed predicate, not an IP heuristic.

Predicateoutside(sanctions_set)

The problemOFAC is strict liability — intent is no defence. Fines reach the billions; executives have served prison time, and firms have lost their licence to operate.

01.02

National exclusion: blocking the United States

Unregistered securities offerings, certain derivatives, unlicensed gambling, and tokens that meet the Howey test all carry federal exposure. SEC Regulation S requires the seller to hold a reasonable belief that the buyer is outside the US. IP geolocation does not meet a defensible reasonable-belief standard. Self-attestation does not either. KYC, the usual fallback, is the most expensive option and still falls short. You absorb the conversion hit — roughly one in ten applicants abandon onboarding, far more in crypto — and it only proves identity at signup, never that the buyer was outside the US at the moment of the trade.

Octet issues a hardware-signed proof before any session opens. The proof covers Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Verifiable offline. Retained for audit. No raw coordinates leave the device.

Predicateoutside(us_polygon)

The problemA single non-compliant US sale is an unregistered securities sale on its own — strict liability, rescission, SEC exposure.

01.03

State-by-state activation

A single platform can serve only the jurisdictions where it holds authorisation, or where federal preemption has been judicially confirmed. The geofence updates without a client release as state injunctions issue or lift. The same primitive supports county-level and municipal carve-outs, and tribal land where gaming compacts apply.

Predicateinside(state_polygon)

The problemRun in a state that hasn't licensed you and it reads as unlicensed gambling — cease-and-desist orders, fines, removal from the state.

01.04

Sub-political zones: prisons, schools, stadiums

Octet supports polygon definitions at any scale, from a single building to a campus to a stadium bowl. The same cryptographic guarantee as a national geofence. Operators publish their polygons; any compliant app honours them.

Predicateoutside(restricted_polygon)

The problemA wager from inside a barred zone lands on the operator.

Location is law.

Stop fraud.

Account takeover, impersonation, synthetic identities — every fraud begins somewhere the real user is not. When proof of location is bound to the device, the attacker fails. Generative AI has industrialised fraud; the defence is a fact that cannot be copied. The proof is passive — generated on the device, with no extra screen, code, or challenge — so you cut fraud without adding another login step. Done right you remove steps, and win back the conversion that security usually costs.

02.01

Account takeover (invisible login)

Octet runs on the customer’s enrolled phone, alongside your existing auth. When that phone proves it is present at the login, your app can skip the push notification, the SMS code, the "was this you?" prompt. The customer just signs in.

Benjamin signs into his bank and the credentials check out. Octet asks one more thing: is his phone in the same place as the login? When his credentials are stolen and used from Myanmar, his phone is still in Chicago, with him — the login and the trusted device are not colocated. The proof fails, your controls step in, and the real Benjamin, at home in Chicago, never sees a challenge.

Predicatecolocated(device, login)

The problemAccount-takeover defenses punish real users: step-up checks drive 15–20% session abandonment, and false declines cost roughly 9× the fraud.

02.02

Business email compromise · multi-sig wire approval

A large wire moves on a few sign-offs, and a sign-off is often an email. Octet binds each approval to a signed proof that it came from an enrolled device — one belonging to an authorized signer — proven to be standing in one of your offices. A BEC attacker in Romania fires the same request with compromised credentials; Octet responds with proof that the signing device is not at one of the designated offices. The transaction fails. For high-value transfers, require two of your signers, each proven present.

Predicatedevice ∈ finance_signers · within(100m, office_sites)

The problem63% of orgs hit by BEC · ~$130K average loss per incident

02.03

Invoice fraud · supplier verification

Invoices that carry a signed proof the sender's device is at the supplier's registered address get fast-tracked. An attacker in Vietnam compromises your supplier's email and sends a fake invoice. Their device cannot produce a proof for the supplier's address. Flagged before payment.

Predicatewithin(5km, supplier_address)

The problem44% of companies hit by invoice fraud

02.04

One person, one account

Every signup carries a signed proof: this is a real phone, and here is where it is. A fraud ring spins up 1,000 accounts. Emulators and data-centre bots fail the first check: no real hardware to sign with. A farm of real phones clears that, then fails the second: all 1,000 proofs place the devices at one place. No honest cohort signs up 1,000 times from a single spot. Flagged before the bonus pays out.

Policynew_device, "genuine_device", "colocation_count:[<N per location]"

Outputunique_user: NO

The problem~15% of iGaming revenue lost to multi-accounting. 26% of accounts fake.

02.05

The remote engineer who isn't where they claim

You hire a remote engineer. They pass the interviews, say they're in Austin, and you grant repository and wallet access. They are actually working from a sanctioned jurisdiction through a US-based laptop farm — a pattern the FBI has flagged across hundreds of crypto and tech firms. Now a sanctioned actor sits inside your codebase and your treasury. Octet binds a continuous, hardware-signed proof of where the device actually is — checked at onboarding and on every sensitive action, not once at hire. The proof fails, and access never opens.

Predicatenot_in([DPRK, IR, RU, BY, CU, SY])

The problemHire one operative posing as a remote dev and a sanctioned actor holds your code and keys — and every paycheck is a strict-liability OFAC violation.

The attacker is somewhere else.