This research advocates a concept of reputation-based routing as a way to achieve secure routing without compromising scalability. None of the existing work guarantees such strong properties.
In order for this research to succeed, novel mathematical and algorithmic ideas are necessary. Accomplishing our research objective is an extremely high-risk and required multi-disciplinary approach accomplishing breakthroughs in many fields, such as Applied Networking, Artificial Intelligence and Theoretical Computer Science.
This proposal is based on a sequence of preliminary results of the author that show that efficient collaboration in context of weeding out adversarial actions in the network routing setting is possible even under completely adversarial circumstances.
The key differentiator between this work and rest of the published work on similar topics is our insistence of solid mathematical foundations, that will not use unjustified assumptions. The reason for this is that unproven heuristics are not a viable approach in an adversarial setting.
On the other hand, there is an acute need laying the foundation for the area of adversary-tolerant routing. Without such a foundation, we cannot possibly have confidence in ability of Internet to properly function in face of adversarial attacks. Lack of confidence in our cyber-structure casts a doubt on the stability of our society as a whole.
