A primer on the
SECURITY, PRIVACY, AND RELIABILITY
OF THE NEXT GENERATION INTERNET
November 6, 2000
While the Internet revolution has brought unprecedented benefits to both businesses and consumers, it also poses new challenges to policy makers. During the last year, well-publicized viruses such as the "ILOVEYOU" bug, denial of service attacks on e-commerce sites, the alteration of some government Web sites, and incidents of mass credit card theft have heightened concerns about Internet security, privacy, and reliability. As today's Internet evolves into the Next Generation Internet (NGI) -- businesses, consumers, and governments are going to depend upon the Internet even more than they do today. The Internet will become as ubiquitous as electricity and will have to be as reliable. Accordingly, the Global Internet Project (GIP) has organized a workshop on "Security, Privacy, and Reliability of the Next Generation Internet" in Berlin on November 6-7, 2000. At this meeting, GIP members, leading technologists, academics, and government officials from around the globe will explore how the private sector and governments can work together to make the Internet of the future more reliable and trusted. This paper will examine possible obstacles that may hinder the growth and development of the NGI and offer suggestions on how to overcome these potential challenges. These issues will also be discussed during the GIP meeting in Berlin.
I. An Introduction: What is the Next Generation Internet?
"The Next Generation Internet" (or NGI) is a generic phrase used to describe the Internet of the future. The phrase describes not only the network that transports bits between users, it also covers the middleware, the applications software, and the services that make those bits useful. The Next Generation Internet will evolve from today's Internet as new technologies and new standards are deployed. It will also differ from today's Internet in several fundamental ways. The NGI will be:
Faster -- Today the backbone of the Internet runs at 1-2 gigabits per second. Soon, as optical switching becomes affordable and commonplace, we expect to see backbone speeds of 50-100 gigabits per second. More importantly, Internet users will enjoy megabit-per-second connections, rather than the 20-50,000 bit-per-second connections most Internet users have today. This 100-fold increase in speed will mean that video-conferencing will become as commonplace as fax is today and high-quality video will be a common component of Web sites and other Internet services. In addition, server capacity and speed will increase, and more and more Internet content will be cached in thousands of servers scattered throughout the network. This will dramatically decrease response time.
Always On - Consumers will demand higher reliability as more and more mission-critical applications use the Internet. With improved network components, more reliable servers, better software, and new redundant network architectures, the Internet could have the kind of 99.99 percent reliability typical of telephone systems in most developed countries.
Everywhere - Thanks to wireless and satellite Internet services, it will be possible to be connected to the Internet whenever and wherever you happen to be. Due to limits on the amount of spectrum available -- at least for the next few years -- most wireless Internet connections will be relatively slow (10-20,000 bits/second). However, Third Generation (3G) wireless technology promises speeds of up to 2 megabits per second in ideal circumstances. Many new and exciting location-dependent services will develop as consumers begin to use devices with the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology that provides accurate and continuous location information. For instance, drivers will be able to get customized, up-to-the-minute traffic reports. Tourists will be able to download and listen to a walking or driving tour as they explore a city.
Intelligent - Users of the Next Generation Internet will have the search tools they need not only to search for key words, but also for images in video and photographs. They will be able to abstract or translate text instantaneously and use voice analysis technology to automatically transcribe audio portions from television and radio programs into text, making it easier to search.
Natural - The Next Generation Internet will enable users to collaborate and converse on-line as well as -- or better than -- they do today face-to-face. Collaboration technology that combines video-conferencing with instant messaging and content from the Web and elsewhere will enable virtual teams with people from remote locations to share ideas and information instantly and effortlessly.
Easy - In order to take full advantage of the Next Generation Internet, it will be necessary to ensure that different Internet applications work together seamlessly. Internet users today have to make sure certain browsers, applications, and files are compatible with each other. In the future, applications built on open standards and open source software (such as Linux) will make it much easier to mix-and-match NGI applications to meet users' specific needs.
Trusted - Today the Internet is vulnerable to malicious hackers, viruses, and human error. Users of the Next Generation Internet will require a reliable connection with authenticated identities at both ends, which will allow them the ability to send their sensitive information to its destination safely and securely. The use of authentication technologies such as Public Key Infrastructure will make it possible to confirm sender and receiver identities online, reducing online fraud and enhancing users' privacy.
Various organizations have described the Next Generation Internet and are working on the technologies and projects that will make it possible, including:
Building the Next Generation Internet will require the development and deployment of a number of different key technologies and standards. Fortunately, rapid progress is being made at organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force www.ietf.org, the World Wide Web Consortium www.w3c.org, and other Internet standards groups. The challenge for the Internet industry is to work together to maintain the open, flexible, and competitive nature of the Internet, while ensuring that new technologies and applications are inter-operable and can be made available to all users of the Internet.
If this happens, Internet connectivity will become like electricity. It will be reliable, affordable, and available almost everywhere we would need it to be. Furthermore, you will be able to buy Internet connectivity like you buy electricity today-getting as much as you need when you need it and only paying for what you use.
II. New Applications, New Challenges
The Next Generation Internet will provide new and more cost effective ways to access and share information, enabling people to work together in real time across the far reaches of the globe. It will provide the means for small businesses, even cottage industries, to market their products where they can receive the greatest value. It will provide the basis for delivery of education to more people. It will allow you to use the Internet to control almost every appliance in your home-- the refrigerator, the VCR, the sprinkler system, the furnace. It will connect millions of different sensors -- from medical monitors to package-tracking tags -- to the Internet, enabling greater efficiency throughout industry sectors. It can even improve the delivery of government services.
Of course, these and other NGI applications will pose interesting and often difficult challenges for consumers, manufacturers, governments, and other stakeholders. Some issues we can anticipate today, others will surprise us. Among the looming NGI issues to be discussed at the GIP workshop in Berlin are:
1) Personal privacy. As more and more people use wireless Internet connections, Internet service providers and others will have the ability to collect personally identifiable information on users, including what they say, what they do, and where they are. Although this data will be used to provide customized services to Internet users, including services that are consistent with expressed personal preferences (such as personal location-based services such as maps and traffic reports or reviews of local restaurants), it could also be used to track individuals and invade their privacy. In addition, in a few years it will be commonplace for Web sites to offer high-quality video imagery. Restaurants, hotels, stores, day care centers, and other facilities may all have Web cams running 24 hours a day. Each of us may be on camera hundreds of times of day. Who will be able to watch? How will the video be stored? Who and what will have access to the archived video and the results of any analysis using automated scans of such video data?
2) Reliability. As we spend more and more time on-line and as more and more mission-critical functions such as health monitoring, emergency response, large financial transactions, and on-line voting come to depend upon the Internet, the Internet must be both functional and reliable. Yet over the next few years, we expect to see a dramatic 100-fold increase in demand for Internet speed and capacity. Meeting the simultaneous need for increased reliability and bandwidth will be a huge technological challenge. Furthermore, as the number of applications running on the Internet increases, the complexity of the system could lead to management problems that could reduce the reliability and security of the Internet.
3) Authentication. One of the most vexing Internet security problems is illustrated by the saying, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." Because inter-operable authentication technology has not been widely deployed, it is difficult to confirm the identity or intentions of people and agents that populate the Internet. Lack of authentication, and an implicit distributed model of trust on the Internet, are two reasons why computer hacking and on-line fraud are so common today. How can industry and governments spur the deployment of authentication technologies? Where will authentication be required? What is a feasible model for trusted authority that can underpin an Internet-wide deployment of authentication technologies? When and where will we be able to be anonymous on the Next Generation Internet?
These issues can be viewed as artifacts of a more fundamental issue that
underpins any communications system. Communications technologies create the
ability for people and agents to interact at a distance. This interaction is
between distant parties, whose true identity and intentions cannot be readily
verified by the other party. Most communications systems present some aspects of
this property. Yet if we want to use a communications system for useful purposes
we have to trust the communications system and trust the bona fides of the party
we are interacting with.
Such an approach is practical for the postal system, where a couple hundred national post offices carry most of the world's mail, or for traditional telephony, where most of the world's telephone customers are served by a few hundred established carriers. In these systems, administrative control of the network and the data that flows within the network uses different paths, so that malicious use cannot pervert the control plane of the network. For instance, phone companies know who their customers are, where they are, and their phone numbers and do not have to rely upon information embedded in the data carrying their phone conversations to determine that.
In contrast, there are hundreds of thousands of organizations that run Internet hosts and are responsible for connecting users to the Internet. As a result, from the perspective of the trust and control model, today's Internet has very little in common with traditional communication systems, apart from the need for some form of trust model. Internet users place the same level of trust in the Internet as we already place in these other communications systems, yet since the Internet was designed to be decentralized and since it is so easy to get set up an Internet host, there is no common imposed authority model and no uniform model of exchange of credentials associated with access to the Internet. Furthermore, Internet service providers must use the network itself to exchange and validate information about the identity of users. The risks we face are when this model of implicit trust is twisted back on us and perverted through using data to gain access to the network's control elements (which enables spoofing, redirection of Internet traffic, denial of service attacks, and other malicious activities).
III. Looking Ahead and Finding Possible Solutions
In Berlin, workshop participants will explore these and other challenges that Internet stakeholders could face as the Internet increases in size, speed, and importance. The goal of the workshop is to foster and enhance existing and future private sector efforts to find global, non-regulatory solutions to policy problems before policy makers feel compelled to act with blunt instruments of regulatory or legislative "solutions." There are a number of key standards, which if effectively implemented, could help address many of the problems outlined above. These include:
IPv6 (the new Internet protocol), which is essential if the Internet is not to run out of IP addresses. As the number of Internet users continues to double every few years, as the wireless Internet spreads, and as more and more devices become connected to the Internet, it will be impossible to assign unique addresses to each user and device because of the limited number of addresses available with IPv4, the version of the Internet Protocol currently in use. To deal with the shortage of IPv4 addresses, many Internet service providers have installed NAT (Network Address Translation) devices between their networks and the rest of the Internet. This increases the complexity of the system and destroys the end-of-end nature of the Internet and inhibits "always on" peer-to-peer networking.
IPsec (a new standard for Internet security) has been developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. It will encrypt Internet packets packet by packet, thus providing a very high level of privacy and security. However, IPsec will be very difficult to deploy and use if IPv6 is not also widely deployed.
P3P (the Platform for Privacy Preference) is a standard that was recently developed by the World Wide Web Consortium to enable users of Internet browsers to customize their browser so that it will only connect to Web sites that provide the user with the level of privacy protection that he or she desires.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is a system for providing effective and reliable authentication for Internet users. There are many competing version of PKI available on the market today and many companies and organizations have deployed a PKI for their intranets. Unfortunately, these different systems usually do not inter-operate.
The 3G (Third Generation) wireless standard will enable true wireless Internet connections at least ten times faster than the indirect connections available today from networks using WAP or iMode standards. In addition, it will provide better security and will almost certainly use the Ipv6 standard. Wireless Internet service using the 3G standard is expected to be available in Japan next year and in parts of the US by 2002.
While new technologies and standards are essential, in some cases, it is clear that new government policies or significant changes in old policies will also be required. The process is only beginning and there are many complex questions that Internet stakeholders are only starting to understand and address.
While the workshop participants will not be able to identify, let alone solve, all the new policy problems that will arise with the Next Generation Internet, workshop participants will likely agree that to specify exactly how the Internet should develop is neither useful nor possible. The best way to ensure that new solutions are available to address many of the challenges identified in Berlin is to enable innovation and competition in the marketplace. That is the most important role of government in the development of the Next Generation Internet.
Governments must avoid the temptation to impose old regulatory and legal models on the Next Generation Internet. While it may provide services that resemble telephony, broadcasting, and other media, it is fundamentally different -- more versatile, more affordable, and less constrained by the limits of geography, bandwidth, and spectrum. Instead of trying to impose national or regional solutions to policy challenges, governments should encourage the private sector to find non-regulatory solutions that will be global and flexible enough to keep up with rapid changes in technology.
The private sector needs to work together to ensure that the Internet continues to be an open platform for innovation and experimentation. The strength of the Internet is that it is built on open standards that enable one person's good idea to be deployed throughout the network in weeks. We must preserve that openness and avoid the growing number of efforts to build "walled gardens," which, while connected to the Internet, rely upon different standards and do not provide access to all the applications available on the true Internet. Ensuring that the Internet provides end-to-end connectivity and transparency requires that all Internet service providers use consistent and open standards, which is essential if we wish to enjoy all the power and potential of the Next Generation Internet.
The Global Internet Project
The Global Internet Project (GIP) is an international group of senior executives committed to fostering continued rapid growth of the Internet. Members come from leading Internet-centric companies representing the telecommunications, hardware, software, financial services, and content sectors. GIP participants are well-known leaders in the Internet Revolution and represent companies based in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. Dr. James Clark, former chairman of Netscape Communications Corporation, founded the group. John Patrick, Vice President for Internet Technology at IBM, is the current chairman of the GIP.
The GIP was formed in 1996 to accelerate the growth of the Internet by finding non-regulatory solutions to problems that might slow its development. Since its formation, the GIP has addressed a wide range of Internet policy issues, including encryption, cyber-security, jurisdiction in cyberspace, the collision of broadcast law with the Internet, and domain name allocation. These are difficult problems because they are global, they involve a large number of players with often-conflicting interests, and they require solutions that will not be made obsolete by new technologies.
For that reason, the GIP convened a two-day workshop on "Next Generation Internet Policy" in Brussels September 16-17, 1999. In the ongoing series of NGI policy workshops, industry leaders, academics, and government officials will continue to explore new opportunities and policy challenges that the NGI will bring.