Subject: [Din] Metamorphic Networking Software

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2021 21:18:24 +0200 (CEST)

This falls into several research group territories touching code-as-infrastructure, code-as-content and compute-in-the-network: please pardon the cross-posting if you see things differently.
Looking forward to receiving comments!

Best, c

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Code Control and Metamorphic Networking Software

Over 50 years, Internet standardization had to expand into territories that are not "protocols" in a strict sense. RFCs on policies, best practice, and auxiliary systems like Certificate Transparency are examples, some of them with quite drastic consequences where browsers might simply refuse to provide their service if that "auxiliary" system flags a problem, which may stem from a real issue or some misconfiguration. We project that software that runs the Internet's protocols will be the next venue for control paths: What initially looks like a sound approach e.g., enforce specific code revision levels for operational software, may turn out to become a security nightmare where the access to respective decisive actions is a single point of abuse and a warfare issue, requiring extreme security measures with obvious centralization problems.

Before we end up in a world where one needs a centrally issued "license to code" with respective clearance levels for writing P4 code, and where a "Internet Code Police" roams the net, alternatives to such code control systems should be researched. While the Internet started with the mission to survive jamming attacks, the new critical mission is to survive attacks against its code generation, deployment and operation processes.

Our assumption is that any human-operated decision hooks in the code will be vulnerable to coercion wherefore code control should become part of the code itself. Protocol specs are supposed to provide operational stability within their realm regardless of malformed packets or protocol violations. Similarly we seek ensembles of programs which continue to operate despite node subversion, code infiltration and deceitful code execution.

We started a research effort called "Metamorphic Networking Software" which stands for code that can shift its form and execution places for performance reasons but also when under attack. I'm reaching out to other researchers who want to join this effort and explore evolution paths towards a code-sovereign Internet.

<[email-masked]>, July 2021

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