# RCDS cyber (Tibbs) (part 1 of 2)

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [21], part 1 of 2. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: document (PDF), 2011 (year of the work, not of publication), https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf. Text: document text
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the money step (Global Village Development Bank, 2009), before the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Secure communications design; relevant to the comms need but not to the camp build directly.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - RCDS cyber (Tibbs) (2011): Interview for the UK Royal College of Defence Studies' cyber research, run by Hardin Tibbs of Synthesys:...
  - Blind in the Panopticon: The decreasing marginal utility of access to information as an aspect of cyber policy (2012): Cyber policy essay: past a point, more surveillance data has negative value, because a state can collect... (suggested by machine)
  - Taking a crack at a practical system (introducing the ESCROWNYM) (2012): Blog essay proposing the escrownym: an identity lodged with escrow brokers under a legally binding... (suggested by machine)
  - The Global Cyber Game: Achieving strategic resilience in the global knowledge society (2013): Hardin Tibbs's 2013 report of the UK Defence Academy Cyber Inquiry for the Ministry of Defence, which... (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - cryptographic applications: Cryptography applied: from 1990s cypherpunk practice to identity cards, Ethereum and Mattereum.
  - cyber and defense: Security work for defense clients, built on one idea: set rivals to check each other. Resilience and Opportunity in...
  - fiction draws on: The work that fed the fiction.
  - CheapID to Mattereum: One identity pattern, from a person's ID card in 2006 to warranties on physical goods in 2017. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - rich data capitalism: Cheap information changes what a market can carry: price signals hold only a few bits (2013), blockchains cut... (through a work suggested by machine)
- Topics: The Global Cyber Game (70%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: free culture (5 here; 4 sources in all, earliest dated 2010); cyber (13 here; 32 sources in all, earliest dated 2009); critical infrastructure (12 here; 54 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 7 undated); OODA loop (4 here; 9 sources in all, earliest dated 2008, 3 undated); OODA (5 here; 16 sources in all, earliest dated 2008, 7 undated); digital identity (5 here; 35 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); supply chains (6 here; 59 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 2 undated); agro-industrial (1 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2010); case law (1 here; 4 sources in all, earliest dated 2011); Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps (3 here; 38 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 7 undated)
- The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): PGP; Course of Action; market access; case law
- Importance: core-text score 0.45 (1.00 is the top), number 132 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [11] [RCDS cyber (Tibbs) (2011)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/11.md): same career work: RCDS cyber (Tibbs)
  - [164] [Programmable blockchains in context: Ethereum’s Future –... (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/164.md): career thread: Ethereum launch (crypto replaces manufactured scarcity)
- On the same works, just before: [64] [Hope for the World – my talk from the Emergency Housing... (2009)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/64.md); [26] [Index of /TRUTHANDBEAUTY (2010)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/26.md); [820] [Copyright and the digital economy: a case for reason (2010)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/820.md)
- On the same works, just after: [77] I went to the same school as Julian Assange, but we... (2011); [6] [Blind in the Panopticon: The decreasing marginal utility... (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/6.md); [81] [On the ethics (and pragmatics) of cryptography | The... (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/81.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: RCDS cyber (Tibbs), document, 2011, https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [21], https://guptaoption.com/texts/21.md.

## Passages, part 1 of 2
[p. 1 to 2](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=1) Securing the Internet S4inet - a simple safe secure subsystem of the internet In which we imagine how one might overhaul the internet to create a secure subsystem which could not be used for offensive maneuvers, hacking, or public griefing, and make a considered cost-benefit analysis of such an approach. Vinay Gupta http://hexayurt.com/plan For Synthesys Strategic Consulting http://synthstrat.com Table of Contents Axiomatic Framework.........................................................................2 Kennan, Ogarkov, Boyd, Marshall and the broad concept of Cyber....2 Software and thought..........................................................................3 Actors, fast and slow...........................................................................5 A simplified model of our digital assets...............................................5 Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps.....................................................7 Agency and Technology among Slow Actors......................................8 Fast Actor Conflicts...........................................................................11 Safer Digital Systems - S4inet from the ground up...........................14 Safe Content.....................................................................................14 Safe Applications..............................................................................16 Operating Systems...........................................................................18 Personal Hardware...........................................................................18 Network Hardware............................................................................18 Critical Infrastructure and Supply Chains..........................................19 User perception of S4inet.................................................................19 Policy Implications............................................................................20 Downsides........................................................................................21 The limits of analysis - can prototypes lead the way?.......................24 Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 1 Axiomatic Framework Kennan, Ogarkov, Boyd, Marshall and the broadest concept of Cyber OODA is John Boyd's simplification of the human mind as operational in combat. 1. OBSERVE - gather data 2. ORIENT - form patterns of meaning from this data into models 3. DECIDE - choose a course of action based on past experience and current models 4. ACT - implement decisions made, and observe the results Boyd focuses on orientation as the neglected step in post-WW2 American military thinking, and in doing so becomes a cognitive philosopher. But he is a fighter pilot by trade, and so interprets the OODA loop as being about speed: the side which makes good-enough decisions faster and earlier wins. This is undoubtedly true in a good deal of conflict, but extremely high quality decision-making is not usually fast, and can lead to disproportionate impact in long term strategy. A good example is George Kennan's Long Telegram leading to the Policy of Containment leading (along with many other factors) to victory over the USSR. By accurately predicting an end-state some 40 years ahead of current trends, Kennan assured victory more-or-less regardless of shorter cycle activities in the meantime. It was possible for the Soviet Union to win many battles, and still lose the war to Kennan's insight. The nature of cyber, as we know, is a “revolution in affairs.” The Revolution in Military Affairs / Transformation agenda in American military thinking in many ways subsumed cyber but without ever really understanding what civilians would do with the same technologies. The early thinkers (Ogarkov in the USSR) simply planted new capabilities into the same old battle field, resulting in a systemic misunderstanding of the situation. But the insight was there early, in the 1970s. If the Soviets had been able to clearly contextualize their early thinking on the "Military Technical Revolution" as Ogarkov called it, as part of a whole-of-society transformation, they might have been able to predict the problems that centralization of control was breeding in their society. Ogarkov might have caught up with George Kennan. George Kennan, of course, predicted the limited information processing power

[p. 2 to 3](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=2) had been able to clearly contextualize their early thinking on the "Military Technical Revolution" as Ogarkov called it, as part of a whole-of-society transformation, they might have been able to predict the problems that centralization of control was breeding in their society. Ogarkov might have caught up with George Kennan. George Kennan, of course, predicted the limited information processing power of Communist states (command economies) would be the downfall of Communist societies. He's 20 years ahead of Ogarkov, who rather than worrying about the whole of society, worries about the superiority of American information processing on the battlefield. So it is to Kennan's vision that we must return if we are to understand the full import of more efficient information processing on military affairs. Although we do not typically think of Kennan’s work and the Policy of Containment as relating to cyber, in fact we have to acknowledge the Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 2 cybernetic roots of the “cyber” debate. It is much broader than computer security and new classes of autonomous weapons platforms. Kennan's basic framing is that Western societies, the Free World, will eventually triumph over the Soviet system because corruption and politicisation of the truth combined with centralized decision-making will simply rot the system from within. To win, the Free World simply has to keep its own internal conflicts under control, manage Soviet expansionism to make sure there is a healthy alternative available to people, and wait. This could be seen as the real heritage of cyber as a concept: the primacy of information processing in society as a mechanism of power advantage, and the defence of that advantage through integrity and vision as a strategic matter. "We must see that our public is educated to realities of Russian situation... I am convinced we have better chance of realizing those hopes if our public is enlightened and if our dealings with Russians are placed entirely on realistic and matter-of-fact basis... After all, the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping." (excerpted from the closing section of the Long Telegram) By placing cyber into the lineage going back to Kennan and beyond, and linking it at root not only to the Revolution in Military Affairs but further to the Policy of Containment, we get a different broad overview of the terrain and the advantages to be found within it. Software and thought “We need to simplify the overwhelming complexity of the global system in which our questions are embedded in to produce a manageable frame of reference to do a systemic analysis. The result is a "lossy abstraction" which does not paint a complete picture of the situation. Such a model can reveal interesting truths, but axiomatically cannot reveal all the truths that a more accurate model can produce. With limited resources, however, it may be better to be deep than comprehensive.” This is

[p. 3 to 4](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=3) frame of reference to do a systemic analysis. The result is a "lossy abstraction" which does not paint a complete picture of the situation. Such a model can reveal interesting truths, but axiomatically cannot reveal all the truths that a more accurate model can produce. With limited resources, however, it may be better to be deep than comprehensive.” This is a style of thinking endemic to computer science. In the same way that architectural thinking became design thinking as situations change, the spread of software people into politics is creating entirely new sets of options. We can see this in Wikileaks most prominently, but the Aaron Swartz case is bringing a lot of other perspective to the fore. Political thinking done from simplified axioms is everywhere in 2013. This is the cognitive style which goes along with software. Because software authors have been dealing with beyond-human complexity in entirely rational systems, they have developed a set of tools which are entirely unlike those used in politics when dealing with beyond-human Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 3 complex systems. The critical aspect is that political thinking maps strongly to trust and capability networks ("islands of competence") where software thinking falls towards automated testing of system integrity (one might even say "trust but verify.") This distinction becomes extremely important as we consider the interface between technical systems and political systems at the cyber horizon. The differences in how different groups model complexity and the world become very important when we attempt to build an interdisciplinary understanding of the nature of power. Political systems often boil down to "is a person I trust in charge of this?" Software systems often boil down to "can I tell if this is broken, and if so, who will fix it?" The ability to automatically test system integrity is an incredibly important distinguishing feature between how software people think about system integrity and how conventional political culture thinks about system integrity. Because metrics and tests are cheap to perform, the very data which is so scarce in politics (and by extension, war) are cheap and easy to find in software. Authors test their software against automated checks: if the people who’s code they are incorporating into their own software fails those checks, a problem has been identified. Some of the trust is automated. Ambiguity is not a strong factor. So we return to the axiomatic frame: simplify the situation into a manageable set of actors, map their behavior to produce a model which illuminates something worthwhile. But the model cannot be comprehensive because the initial simplifications crop the complexity of the human factor. The S4inet system describes a simplified internet subsystem (the “simplify” step) which automates much of the process of trust and security (the “automate trust” step.) It is typical of the kinds of solutions which software authors (the majority of the actors in the cyber landscape) produce. At the end of this document, this model will be deconstructed to show the flaws in not

[p. 4 to 6](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=4) describes a simplified internet subsystem (the “simplify” step) which automates much of the process of trust and security (the “automate trust” step.) It is typical of the kinds of solutions which software authors (the majority of the actors in the cyber landscape) produce. At the end of this document, this model will be deconstructed to show the flaws in not simply this analysis, but this kind of analysis at a systemic level. Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 4 Actors, fast and slow We need to pay particular attention to actors which move faster than the basic frameworks of government. These "fast actors" are inside of the OODA loop of the State. They can be grouped into four convenient categories. 1. Business - Core innovation engines move faster than regulators. 2. Free Culture - The Free Software movement at one end, Wikileaks and Anonymous at the other. 3. Crime - From organized crime down to small scale credit card fraudsters. 4. Intelligence - State sponsored threats, technically savvy units of other states. Note that we are not grouping "hackers" into a separate category. Hacking is a methodology, like submarine war. The important question is who is doing it, how and why. Hackers of a problematic profile are typically Crime or Free Culture actors. There is little requirement to pay special attention to actors which are slower than the apparatus of the State. Those can be handled by the normal threat-reaction mechanisms of government. Problems which can be understood over a decade or two can be regulated or punished. We are interested in groups capable of out-competing the state with fast transient action inside the responder's OODA loop. A simplified model of our digital assets The OSI model is the lossy abstraction used to connect computer systems. It forms part of a framework that will later be used to examine how agency is used and abused to create advantage in a digital setting. 1. Layer 1: physical layer 2. Layer 2: data link layer 3. Layer 3: network layer 4. Layer 4: transport layer 5. Layer 5: session layer 6. Layer 6: presentation layer 7. Layer 7: application layer The OSI model is largely considered inside a single device, extending to a network. It's designed to give a clear model of what happens from the physical design of an ethernet jack through to the words on a web page, blocked by logical layers and (to some degree) political accountability (i.e. IEEE controls ethernet, ITEF controls TCP/IP and so on.) Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 5 We need to look at a slightly different level of get an effective model to do the analysis in. 1. Content - text, images, sounds, videos etc. 2. Application - web browsers, word processors etc. 3. Operating System - Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD etc. 4. Personal Hardware - computers, phones etc. 5. Network Hardware - routers, wifi boxes, undersea cables etc. 6. Critical Infrastructure and Supply Chains (CISC) - power systems, gas pipelines, logistics

[p. 6 to 8](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=6) do the analysis in. 1. Content - text, images, sounds, videos etc. 2. Application - web browsers, word processors etc. 3. Operating System - Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD etc. 4. Personal Hardware - computers, phones etc. 5. Network Hardware - routers, wifi boxes, undersea cables etc. 6. Critical Infrastructure and Supply Chains (CISC) - power systems, gas pipelines, logistics systems, ports, up to and including financial markets. Applications and Personal Hardware can be owned and operated by other parties and physically remote in The Cloud. Network hardware can be seen as a part of the CISC system, but it's helpful to separate it out because it is a separate vector for attack in many cases. This corresponds roughly to the OSI stack, but is split out a little differently because we want to examine wider areas from a slightly less granular perspective, and we want to consider hardware layers beyond the physical device (i.e. the basic infrastructure required to operate the device.) It is therefore necessary to put Critical Infrastructure and Trade Networks into the map because they feature heavy digital components in many cases, and therefore are directly affected by events at the Application and Content level. Applications therefore includes software used to govern banks and power grids - CISC uses applications to coordinate effort and understand situations. CISC is a very large subset of AIAC (agro-industrial autocatalysis) which is the system which produces cheap food, cheap energy and cheap tools from pre-existing supplies of cheap food, cheap energy and cheap tools. It is the feedback loop at the heart of human culture beyond the subsistence agriculturalist level. As coordination of that system becomes increasingly dependent on digital networks, more and more of our fundamental needs become vulnerable to network disruptions. Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 6 Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps When dealing with governance levels above the individual, we will use the Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps model. 1. Individual 2. Household 3. Neighbourhood 4. Municipality 5. Region 6. State 7. Global as the tiers of effect. The system includes four “tiers of cooperation” (individual, group, organization and state) and an 18 point checklist detailing the survival requirements of each class of entity. These layers are to be understood as bureaucratic layers, rather than representing physical terrain in all cases. Internet governance, for example, is awkwardly split between State actors (mainly US, which dominates the namespaces) and Global actors like ITEF. The physical hardware of the global network is similarly best understood as being governed by individual countries, but existing internationally, again the State / Global split. This is particularly clear when we consider undersea cables, which have to terminate in one country or another, but may provide services to several different nation states. The physical elements which are being regulated or fought over span the normal geographic boundaries of government, in much the same way that trade routes once challenged conventional notions of sovereignty. Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 7 Agency and Technology among Slow

[p. 7 to 9](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=7) have to terminate in one country or another, but may provide services to several different nation states. The physical elements which are being regulated or fought over span the normal geographic boundaries of government, in much the same way that trade routes once challenged conventional notions of sovereignty. Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 7 Agency and Technology among Slow Actors Having defined our actors and the technical and bureaucratic terrain they are traversing, let us examine the stack again. 1. Content 2. Application 3. Operating System 4. Personal Hardware 5. Network Hardware 6. Critical Infrastructure and Supply Chains (CISC) Each one of these systems contains a set of actors in the transactions which make up the layer. Conflicts between these actors are the first order conflicts on the network. Consider conventional actors in the civilian use of the network in non-conflict environments. In this domain, there are a set of fault lines around issues like privacy and market access which form the basic contours of the civilian digital environment. Because none of these actors are criminal or too fast to regulate, the State has an effective role in controlling what happens. Content Actors - consumer (reader, viewer etc.) - producer (author, artist, movie studio) - intermediaries (search engines, hosting services, publishers) Content Actor Conflicts - consumers who ignore copyright (pirates) vs. producers and intermediaries - intermediaries vs. producers (who gets paid when content is sold?) - intermediaries vs. consumers (platform lock-in, forced advertising etc.) Application Actors - consumer (user) - producer (software authors, companies) - intermediaries (app stores) Application Actor Conflicts Although superficially similar to the Content landscape, the terrain has changed significantly because the Application Producer is in near-total control of the Consumer's computer when the software is running. All of the Content conflicts exist, with several new problems. - consumer vs. producer -- privacy (misuse of telephone address books, social network graph etc.) -- advertising (including clearly malicious manipulation of resources) -- reliability (software that can crash damaging a user's data or system) Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 8 Operating System Actors - consumer (user) - application authors (software authors, companies) - OS authors (Apple, Microsoft, Linux, hobbiest operating systems etc.) Operating System Actor Conflicts In theory, the Operating System is simply an application which runs applications. In practice these operating systems are paired with hardware platforms (Apple) or entire software production ecologies (Linux etc.) Developer tools availability and licensing also heavily influences consumer choice, particularly in the Microsoft arena. - consumer vs. OS authors (software choice, digital rights management, privacy) -- historically less of an issue than untrustworthy applications because OS authors have more to lose and are larger legal entities, therefore easier to regulate - OS authors vs. application authors (platform access, terms of use, developer freedom, access to software distribution systems like app stores, operating system security) Personal Hardware Actors - producer - consumer - OS authors In this domain, we're back inside of a relatively simple competitive environment with conventional commercial pressure

[p. 9 to 11](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=9) lose and are larger legal entities, therefore easier to regulate - OS authors vs. application authors (platform access, terms of use, developer freedom, access to software distribution systems like app stores, operating system security) Personal Hardware Actors - producer - consumer - OS authors In this domain, we're back inside of a relatively simple competitive environment with conventional commercial pressure as the primary conflicts. Personal Hardware Actor Conflicts It is worth noting that there is a long standing effort to produce computers which will only run the OS of a specific company (Apple or Microsoft) and that a combination of consumer pressure and technical activism have slowed this effort. However, in mobile phones and tablets, the process of "rooting" a phone is breaking an operating system lock to put the consumer back in charge of their hardware, with attendant security issues (malware on rooted phones.) - producer vs. consumer (locked platforms like the iPhone) - producer vs. OS author (where they are separate usually over default operating system choices etc.) Network Hardware Actors - consumer (network user) - last-mile network producer (cable companies) - backhaul network producer (big telcos) - network hardware producer (maker of routers, switches, cables, network systems) - content intermediaries (Youtube, Netflix etc.) Network Hardware Actor Conflicts - consumer vs. producers (privacy, piracy) - consumer vs. producers (sheer quantity of network use) Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 9 - network producers vs. content producers (charging for network priority or even network access, billing youtube for letting their traffic through) Critical Infrastructure and Supply Chains (CISC) actors - consumer (power grid users, shoppers etc.) - producers (power stations, shops, logistics vendors, grid operators) - regulators (price, reliability etc.) CISC actor conflicts - consumer vs. producer (price, quality of service) - consumer vs. regulator (price, quality of service) The reason for mapping the conventional conflict areas in such detail is simply to put the fights that we all know and understand on the same map as we will put the Fast Actors who are much harder to regulate and police. Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 10 Fast Actor Conflicts Now we will take a second pass through the system, looking at our four classes of fast actors, plus government’s responses to them and other structural conflicts outside of the easily regulated domain. The fast actors are 1. Business 2. Free Culture 3. Crime 4. Intelligence In most cases, producers are Business, but they can also be Free Culture or non-culturally aligned amateurs. Generally it does not matter to the nature of the structural conflicts. Instances where these distinctions matter will be noted individually. Content Actors - consumer (reader, viewer etc.) - producer (author, artist, movie studio) - intermediaries (search engines, hosting services, publishers) Fast Actor Conflicts - consumers vs. producers vs. government -- privacy (government monitoring of communications, building databases, civilian encryption software etc.) -- censorship (political speech, public offence etc.) A particularly acute problem is Muslim rage over insults to their religion. In this instance, government

[p. 11 to 13](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=11) (reader, viewer etc.) - producer (author, artist, movie studio) - intermediaries (search engines, hosting services, publishers) Fast Actor Conflicts - consumers vs. producers vs. government -- privacy (government monitoring of communications, building databases, civilian encryption software etc.) -- censorship (political speech, public offence etc.) A particularly acute problem is Muslim rage over insults to their religion. In this instance, government is in a split role, often protecting assets from destruction by angry crowds who would do far more damage than the State can tolerate, while at the same time condemning the original religious insults. We will come back to this as a hard issue in the Safer Digital Systems section. - producers vs. crime (organized piracy) Large scale copyright infringement, particularly piracy of new movies, is perceived to be a substantial threat to the economic viability of major industries. There is a constant war over decryption of digital TV signals for redistribution over the internet and illicit archiving. Substantial cryptographic expertise is deployed on both sides of this conflict. Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 11 Application Actors - consumer (user) - producer (software authors, companies) - intermediaries (app stores) Application Fast Actor Conflicts - consumer vs. crime Crime uses software in three broad ways - merely destructive viruses, worms, trojans etc. - financial fraud software (credit card fraud, bank account detail spying) - botnets (huge "criminal clouds" of compromised machines, bigger than large legitimate computer clusters in many cases) - consumer vs. intelligence -- applications which offer substantial privacy (skype pre Microsoft, PGP etc.) are often targets of efforts to compromise their services. -- individual users can be targeted by intelligence services (hacking of insurrectionist networks in Syria, for example) Operating System Actors - consumer (user) - application authors (software authors, companies) - OS authors (Apple, Microsoft, Linux, hobbiest operating systems etc.) Operating System Fast Actor Conflicts - government vs. OS authors (security, privacy, standards, anti-trust) - Free Culture vs. government (patents, copyright, back doors etc.) - OS authors vs. crime (system security, anti-virus programs) The largest class of problems exist in organize crime and foreign intelligence services penetrating common operating systems and the associated suites of standard software that go with them. This is a very, very broad class of conflicts and exploits. This plus attacks on weak applications constitutes the majority of the public cyber crisis. Personal Hardware Actors - producer - consumer - OS authors - intelligence vs. government (machines compromised during manufacturing, China particularly) - government vs. producers (anti-trust, backdoors, Clipper Chip etc.) Thus far there has been very little criminal use of hardware exploits. One notable exception is ATM and point of sale credit card skimmers, sophisticated little devices which are used to clone the authentication cards used by civilians to access their bank accounts and credit lines. Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 12 Network Hardware Actors - consumer (network user) - last-mile producer (cable companies) - backhaul producer (big telcos) - content intermediaries (Youtube, Netflix etc.) Conflicts: - government vs. producers --

[p. 12 to 14](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=12) card skimmers, sophisticated little devices which are used to clone the authentication cards used by civilians to access their bank accounts and credit lines. Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 12 Network Hardware Actors - consumer (network user) - last-mile producer (cable companies) - backhaul producer (big telcos) - content intermediaries (Youtube, Netflix etc.) Conflicts: - government vs. producers -- anti-trust, quality of service, regulation -- censorship at the network level -- copyright enforcement at the network level - intelligence vs. producers -- monitoring and privacy (filtering whole pipes, submarine interception of undersea cables) -- foreign intelligence services compromising hardware systems Critical Infrastructure and Supply Chain Actors - consumer (power grid users, shoppers etc.) - producers (power stations, shops, logistics vendors, grid operators) - regulators (price, reliability etc.) These are the big issues. CISC Conflicts intelligence vs. producers -- large scale system hacking (cyberwar) -- small scale tactical compromises for specific objectives crime vs. producers -- blackmail, intrusion, vandalism It must be noted that all the software and hardware used in critical infrastructure systems is subject to largely the same class of problems as civilian consumer products. There's no sudden change from civilian computer security practices to properly hardened systems, in the way that a desk drawer is different from a bank vault: the distinctions are much softer, and the security is not much higher. A lot of this is because of software ecology problems, where the Microsoft operating systems, with known security issues dating back to prehistory, continue to be used in sensitive settings. The "Windows for Warships" issues the UK military had are a very good example of this class of problems. However, security-from-the-ground-up operating systems are not in widespread use. Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 13 Safer Digital Systems - S4inet from the ground up We are now ready to examine how to construct a "simple safe secure subsystem of the internet" (S4inet) by examining the failure modes for the current system. From the previous analysis, we have four classes of problems to consider. 1. Malicious content 2. Malicious applications 3. Malicious activity on networks (attacking weak software) 4. Malicious hardware Safe Content - vector for malicious software - copyright - illegal in jurisdiction (Nazi content in Germany, some kinds of pornography, religious defamation) - liable to incite riots and similar, offensive Let us consider these problems in turn. Malicious software Sufficiently simple file formats (ASCII text, say) are very rarely possible vectors for malicious software. Malware usually has to pretend to be data, break the software being used to view or process the file, and get some of its code executed as if it was trusted system code. Complex file formats, such as Flash, PDF or video formats are much more vulnerable to this class of errors. This is a preventable problem. The more complex a file format is, the more functionality it specifies and controls, the harder it is to secure. But extremely simple file formats, processed in simple ways, are extremely secure. It

[p. 14 to 15](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=14) trusted system code. Complex file formats, such as Flash, PDF or video formats are much more vulnerable to this class of errors. This is a preventable problem. The more complex a file format is, the more functionality it specifies and controls, the harder it is to secure. But extremely simple file formats, processed in simple ways, are extremely secure. It would be relatively easy to take an earlier stage in the development of the Web and render it fully secure with formal methods. The simpler software and file formats could be taken to pieces extremely carefully, and reassembled into a truly secure web-like system (presented as S4inet below.) This might take us back to a time before video, to simple formatted text and static images, but to do this in a completely secure way is entirely technically possible. At this time, no actor with sufficient clout chooses to design software this way, because the interests of most groups are aligned towards innovation regardless of the security implications. Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 14 Copyright There is no practicable way to prevent copyrighted content being transmitted. Files can be modified or encrypted to prevent copyrighted material being detected, then decoded by illicit viewers. For example, Youtube videos are flipped left-to-right with small, imperceptible gaps in the soundtrack and video frames missing to avoid content detection algorithms from Google. A simple approach would be to require a government-issued ID card to generate a digital identity, and for all content on a secure internet to be digitally signed by its authors. Nothing that did not bear a digital signature from a known individual would be allowed to be carried by network carriers. The system would only carry trivially legally traceable content. Preventing repeat offenses would be easy. A copyright claim could be resolved down with certainty to a given legally liable individual. The framework is simple enough to allow automated enforcement. If a digital signature is found on a document that is copyrighted by another party, the owner of that account will be fined or otherwise punished. This does not allow us to prove authorship - a signature can be stripped and replaced with another signature in all cases. However, to be transmitted by the network, a document must be signed, so at least it is possible to identify with certainty who has retransmitted an illicit work. Illegal in jurisdiction This falls into two halves: those who are in the jurisdiction where the law applies, and those who are not. If we assume a digital ID system as described, then we can trace the identity of a person responsible for a file. If they are within the jurisdiction they can be, generally, assumed to be responsible for their actions within regular legal frameworks. However, if the author is outside of the nation these laws pertain to, how is content to be managed? The answer is not clear. There are several factors to consider. Is the offence committed when the content is created?

[p. 15 to 16](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=15) If they are within the jurisdiction they can be, generally, assumed to be responsible for their actions within regular legal frameworks. However, if the author is outside of the nation these laws pertain to, how is content to be managed? The answer is not clear. There are several factors to consider. Is the offence committed when the content is created? No, laws are not exportable. Is the offence committed by the person requesting the content? What if they did not know what was in it until it was imported? Are intermediaries liable? The current approach to this set of questions is incoherent, a muddle of case law, incoherent legal precedents, mis-applied international communications treaties, and intermediaries pretending to be parts of legal frameworks that probably should not actually apply to them. With a fresh start, the simplest approach to this is for content to be flagged with a list of jurisdictions in which it is known to be legal by the author. To falsify this list is understood to be an infringement, or to make an error, is clearly a user’s own liability as made clear by a contract Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 15 signed before access to the system is granted. Users must know how to use the system safely, as (for example) a license is required before one is permitted to drive. Authors then become responsible for using their own judgement, or the judgement of known trusted third parties, to ascertain the legality of a document in a given jurisdiction and flag where it can be read. A user sends a document to a clearing agency which flags where it is legal, in their opinion. If they make a mistake, they are liable, not the original user. If this approach is insufficient, regimes with extremely strict laws may require published documents to be vetted by their own trusted third parties before they can be put online. They may simply require their own oversight bodies to be paid to review material before it is admitted to their countries. None of this is necessarily a block to older models of freedom of speech, but it does fly in the face of common practice on the internet in 2013. It puts regular bureaucratic steps in the way of the international export of information. A substantial step, but one which is required to bring internet communications within the legal frameworks of the nation state. Incitement to riot and similar bad public reactions The problem here is that it may not be apparent ahead of time what kinds of content will cause problems. Furthermore, the original author of a piece may simply not know or intend it to cause issues. A plausible example would be an academic archeological paper which is later misconstrued as being offensive to a cultural group or religion. The content in the paper may be factual, the intention academic, and the public reaction based on misunderstanding or misreading, and yet there is still a public order issue.

[p. 16 to 17](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/cyber/S4inet-a_safer_internet_public.pdf#page=16) simply not know or intend it to cause issues. A plausible example would be an academic archeological paper which is later misconstrued as being offensive to a cultural group or religion. The content in the paper may be factual, the intention academic, and the public reaction based on misunderstanding or misreading, and yet there is still a public order issue. Some issues of this kind may be unavoidable. However, in most cases, only works intended to cause offence will generate this kind of reaction. If we assume that people must flag work as "legal in jurisdiction X" and jurisdictions can ban material which is controversial in their area if they see fit, this loophole closes relatively tight. Material likely to disrupt public order are illegal to publish, and if somebody publishes such work and vouches that it is legal in a jurisdiction where it clearly going to cause problems, their legal liability is easy to decide. The conclusion is that a relatively simple set of technical measures can create a limited-but-secure space for content on an internet-like computer system, affording at least some of the current utility of the internet, at the cost of some privacy and freedom. Safe Applications The initial software used to run a system like the one described - a simple content renderer akin to a secure web browser, and an identity architecture - could be written by the security community with strict oversight from technically sophisticated arms of the international community. Vinay Gupta for Synthesys Strategic Consulting 16 In such an environment, would it be safe to distribute arbitrary new software? Would we be limited to a handful of approved applications, or could we run all kinds of new code? The short, simple answer is no. As soon as computers get new capabilities, risks go up, and the secure system is now insecure again. However, innovation being what it is, there are at least three ways to imagine this. Software Strongbox Imagine S4inet a sort of "strongbox" in which content is safe because it is simple, and the software used to view that content is safe because it is extremely carefully written. Computers could run this software to view the S4inet and simply never step outside of it, but at the same time, they could run a much wider range of software and access more general services with corresponding security risks. Your computer would never get a virus or get hacked from S4inet content, but for the rest of the internet, you would take your chances. Dedicated Hardware Alternatively, the S4inet could run on separate hardware. In this model, code would have to be digitally signed as secure before it could be run. Terminals would be default-secure to a very high degree. See the Personal Hardware section below for more details. Capability Computing A third model is to envisage S4inet running on an extremely secure underlying operating system, where the segregation between different sets of content is complete enough to allow a secure S4inet system

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Continues in https://guptaoption.com/texts/21-2.md (part 2 of 2).
End of [21] RCDS cyber (Tibbs), part 1 of 2. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.