Who has not suffered insecurities, breaches of service, and networks in recent years?

What is SCION?

SCION (Scalability, Control, and Isolation On Next-Generation Networks) is a proposed Future Internet architecture that aims to be efficient even in the presence of actively malicious network operators; and is already in active use by financial institutions, ETH domain institutions, and the Swiss government.

The SCION architecture is path aware.

It uncovers several possible paths between hosts and enables them to select the communication path among the ones offered. The paths are cryptographically protected to avoid the malicious creation of so-called “Frankenpaths” that were not provided. SCION can provide dozens of path choices, while in today’s Internet Multipath TCP needs to rely on different network interfaces.

For instance, a user with a mobile phone has Cellular plus Wifi, providing 2 paths at best.

SCION Ambition

Previous work has demonstrated that it is now possible to verify complex systems such as operating systems and compilers. Our ambition is to develop the first formally-verified network component, a SCION router. This breakthrough is within reach because SCION has been designed for verifiability.

What does Scion solve?

Vulnerabilities in widely-used protocols such as BGPSEC, SSL, and 5G authentication illustrate that established engineering approaches - primarily based on reviews and testing - are insufficient to ensure security. Moreover, even if a protocol is secure, its implementation might introduce (intended or unintended) vulnerabilities such as Backdoors.

Vulnerabilities in widely-used protocols such as BGPSEC, SSL, and 5G authentication illustrate insufficient efforts to ensure the security of advanced protocols for distributed systems.

It is, therefore, imperative that the security and availability of the NGI are ensured by formal proofs for the design and implementation.

How does it play with current networks?

SCION essentially can make use of network infrastructure in the same way today’s Internet uses layer-2 connectivity. In other words, surprisingly few changes are needed to deploy SCION at an ISP or end domain.

Where is the Scion revolution starting from?

It seems SCION adoption is taking off in the banking system, followed by government, research organizations, and ISPs. One company reportedly wants to start selling a product for public infrastructure, and another one wants to sell routers with SCION connectivity.

Anapaya Systems (Peter and Adrian are co-founders, among others) is commercializing SCION as well.

Benefits include lower latencies (20 to 40%!) and improved bandwidth through the simultaneous use of several connections, enabling high-performance file transfer and high availability connectivity.

Quick recovery from inter-domain failures and geo-fencing are other use-cases customers are interested in.

How many people work on SCION?

Open process in standardization: around 60 researchers around the world are actively working on SCION today (March 2021).

How about VerifiedSCION, funded by NGI Pointer?

The keyword is verification.

The project will verify that the SCION protocol is secure, for instance, that packets can travel only along authorized paths and that attacks can be detected. However, the project won’t stop there: It will also demonstrate that it is feasible to prove that SCION’s open-source version implements the protocol correctly and is free from backdoors and other vulnerabilities.

How is it unique?

VerifiedSCION concentrates on preventing vulnerabilities in the SCION protocol and implementation itself but trusts the compiler, libraries, OS, and hardware. Thereby, it reduces the attack surface substantially.

This verification needs to happen “statically”: the check is done once and for all, for all possible executions. This is a much stronger guarantee than tests at run-time.

Crucially, we will demonstrate that the code-level verification can be performed by industrial developers rather than formal-methods experts, which is essential for widespread adoption

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