Infrafabric-POC-docs/IF_TTT_SECURITY_HARDENING_SUMMARY_v1.3.md

IF.TTT Security Hardening — Public Summary (IF.ARMOUR crossover)

Author: InfraFabric Research
Status: Summary (safe to share)
Updated: 2025-12-29
Version: 1.3 (summary)
Citation: if://doc/ifttt-security-hardening-summary/v1.3

This is a public summary of the internal hardening proposal:

• Internal full paper: if://doc/ifttt-security-hardening/v1.3
• This summary intentionally omits operator details (hostnames, container IDs, internal network layout).

What problem this solves (black/white)

IF.TTT’s job is to publish receipts that survive skepticism:

• A source artifact → source_sha256
• An output artifact → output_sha256
• A trace record binding them → trace_id + public shareId
• Optional offline bundles → lightweight / standard / full

Hardening is necessary because IF.TTT is exposed to adversarial pressure:

• spam and resource exhaustion
• scraping and tampering attempts
• epistemic attacks (“make the receipts look unreliable”)
• signer/key compromise attempts (the highest-value target)

Hardening does not mean “unhackable.” It means:

• failures are detected early
• damage is contained
• compromised components can be isolated
• receipts remain explainable and verifiable

The hostile-world assumption (required)

Operate as if:

• clients are adversarial
• the network is hostile
• servers will eventually have unknown vulnerabilities
• the goal is to protect the signing process and preserve an auditable record

IF.ARMOUR → IF.SECURITY.* (naming)

“IF.ARMOUR” is the research umbrella for adversarial hardening patterns.

In the product naming system, these patterns surface as:

• IF.SECURITY.DETECT — detect abuse/anomaly patterns
• IF.SECURITY.CHECK — validate inputs, policies, integrity
• IF.SECURITY.WATCH — liveness/drift checks + escalation rules
• IF.SECURITY.TRAP — honeypots/tarpits/deception

Control themes (what gets hardened)

1) Economic defenses (rate limits + PoW)

Goal: make bulk abuse expensive while keeping normal users fast.

Mechanisms:

• per-route rate limiting on public surfaces
• “proof-of-work” challenges for suspicious upload paths (optional, adaptive)

2) Honey-traces (canary receipts)

Goal: detect scrapers and receipt poisoning attempts by publishing decoy shareIds and measuring interaction patterns.

Mechanisms:

• decoy receipts that look valid but are tagged internally
• automated triage when decoys are accessed at scale

3) Tarpits / time vampires

Goal: consume attacker resources (time, concurrency) while extracting behavioral signals.

Mechanisms:

• deliberate slow paths for suspicious clients (bounded)
• jitter and challenge escalation for repeated probing

4) Swarm-Lock + Purgatory Protocol (containment)

Goal: if a component is suspected compromised or desynchronized, freeze before poisoning receipts.

Mechanisms:

• liveness checks and quorum-based gating for critical state
• “lock” mode that halts signing/publishing
• “purgatory” mode that isolates and requires explicit rejoin validation

5) Backups and survivability (two realities)

Reality A (single-host prototype):

• local backups and snapshots are adequate for early-stage iteration

Reality B (portable production profile):

• tiered backups (hot/warm/cold)
• optional replication to a secondary host (or later to cloud object storage)
• recovery procedures documented as part of the trust model

6) Verifier supply-chain hardening

Goal: the offline verifier must be trusted.

Mechanisms:

• publish hashes for verifier artifacts
• optionally sign verifier releases
• keep “what is verified” vs “what is not” explicit in tool output

What to expect (deployed vs planned)

Deployed (proof layer):

• public receipts + stable no-login aliases
• hash binding + signatures (including PQ receipts when available)
• offline verification path via triage bundles + verifier tooling

Planned (hardening layer):

• honey-traces and deception
• adaptive PoW + tarpits for abusive clients
• Swarm-Lock/Purgatory containment
• stronger backup tiers and survivability procedures

Why this matters

Without hardening, public receipts can become a new kind of theater:

• visible, but easy to undermine
• impressive, but fragile under adversarial pressure

With hardening, IF.TTT becomes:

• boring to operate
• legible to reviewers
• resilient under skepticism and abuse