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W3C/IAB workshop on Strengthening the Internet Against Pervasive Monitoring (strintws)

Team Name W3C/IAB workshop on Strengthening the Internet Against Pervasive Monitoring
Acronym strintws
State Active
Additional resources RFC 7687: Report from the Strengthening the Internet (STRINT) Workshop
Workshop web site

Group description

Logistics/Dates:

  • Submissions due: Jan 20 2014
  • Invitations issued: Jan 31, 2014
  • Workshop Date: Feb 28 (pm) & Mar 1 (am) 2014
  • Location: Telefonica, 20 Air Street, London W1B 5DL MAP
  • Hosts: The STREWS project and Telefónica Digital
  • Program Committee Chairs: Stephen Farrell, Hannes Tschofenig and Rigo Wenning

Send submissions to: group-strint-submission@w3.org

Workshop web site: http://www.w3.org/2014/strint/

For queries, contact: Stephen Farrell <stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie>, Hannes Tschofenig <hannes.tschofenig@gmx.net>, Rigo Wenning <rigo@w3.org>

The Vancouver IETF plenary concluded that pervasive monitoring represents an attack on the Internet, and the IETF has begun to carry out various of the more obvious actions [1] required to try to handle this attack. However, there are additional much more complex questions arising that need further consideration before any additional concrete plans can be made.

The W3C and IAB will therefore host a workshop on the topic of “Strengthening the Internet Against Pervasive Monitoring” before IETF-89 in London in March 2014, with support from the EU FP7 STREWS [2] project.

Pervasive monitoring targets protocol data that we also need for network manageability and security. This data is captured and correlated with other data. There is an open problem as to how to enhance protocols so as to maintain network manageability and security but still limit data capture and correlation.

The overall goal of the workshop is to steer IETF and W3C work so as to be able to improve or “strengthen” the Internet in the face of pervasive monitoring. A workshop report in the form of an IAB RFC will be produced after the event.

Technical questions for the workshop include:

  • What are the pervasive monitoring threat models, and what is their effect on web and Internet protocol security and privacy?
  • What is needed so that web developers can better consider the pervasive monitoring context?
  • How are WebRTC and IoT impacted, and how can they be better protected? Are other key Internet and web technologies potentially impacted?
  • What gaps exist in current tool sets and operational best practices that could address some of these potential impacts?
  • What trade-offs exist between strengthening measures, (e.g. more encryption) and performance, operational or network management issues?
  • How do we guard against pervasive monitoring while maintaining network manageability?
  • Can lower layer changes (e.g., to IPv6, LISP, MPLS) or additions to overlay networks help?
  • How realistic is it to not be fingerprintable on the web and Internet?
  • How can W3C, the IETF and the IRTF better deal with new cryptographic algorithm proposals in future?
  • What are the practical benefits and limits of “opportunistic encryption”?
  • Can we deploy end-to-end crypto for email, SIP, the web, all TCP applications or other applications so that we mitigate pervasive monitoring usefully?
  • How might pervasive monitoring take form or be addressed in embedded systems or different industrial verticals?
  • How do we reconcile caching, proxies and other intermediaries with end-to-end encryption?
  • Can we obfuscate metadata with less overhead than TOR?
  • Considering meta-data: are there relevant differences between protocol artefacts, message sizes and patterns and payloads?

Position papers (maximum of 5 pages using 10pt font or any length Internet-Drafts) from academia, industry and others that focus on the broader picture and that warrant the kind of extended discussion that a full day workshop offers are the most welcome. Papers that reflect experience based on running code and deployed services are also very welcome. Papers that are proposals for point-solutions are less useful in this context, and can simply be submitted as Internet-Drafts and discussed on relevant IETF or W3C lists, e.g. the IETF perpass list. [3]

The workshop will be by invitation only. Those wishing to attend should submit a position paper or Internet-Draft. All inputs submitted and considered relevant will be published on the workshop web page. The organisers (STREWS project participants, IAB and W3C staff) will decide whom to invite based on the submissions received. Sessions will be organized according to content, and not every accepted submission or invited attendee will have an opportunity to present as the intent is to foster discussion and not simply to have a sequence of presentations.