Title: REMOTEGATE: Incentive-Compatible Remote Configuration of Security Gateways,
Abstract: Imagine that a malicious hacker is trying to attack a server over the
Internet and the server wants to block the attack packets as close to their
point of origin as possible. However, the security gateway ahead of the source
of attack is untrusted. How can the server block the attack packets through
this gateway? In this paper, we introduce REMOTEGATE, a trustworthy mechanism
for allowing any party (server) on the Internet to configure a security gateway
owned by a second party, at a certain agreed upon reward that the former pays
to the latter for its service. We take an interactive incentive-compatible
approach, for the case when both the server and the gateway are rational, to
devise a protocol that will allow the server to help the security gateway
generate and deploy a policy rule that filters the attack packets before they
reach the server. The server will reward the gateway only when the latter can
successfully verify that it has generated and deployed the correct rule for the
issue. This mechanism will enable an Internet-scale approach to improving
security and privacy, backed by digital payment incentives.