Advances in computational resiliency

The notion of computational resiliency refers to the ability of a distributed application to tolerate intrusion when under information warfare (IW) attack. It is one of several new technologies under development by the U.S. Air Force that aim to harden the battlefield information structure from an IW perspective. These technologies seek to strengthen a military mission, rather than protect its network infrastructure using static defensive measures such as network security, intrusion sensors, and firewalls. Even if an IW attack is never detected, it should be possible to continue information operations and achieve mission objectives. Computational resiliency involves the dynamic use of replication, guided by mission policy, to achieve intrusion tolerance. However, it goes further to dynamically regenerate replication in response to an IW attack, allowing the level of system assurance to be maintained. Replicated structures are protected through several techniques such as camouflage, dispersion, and layered security policy. This paper describes a prototype concurrent programming technology that we have developed to support computational resiliency. Brief outlines describe how the library has been applied to prototypical applications.