[ZTCPP] Re: [hackathon] IETF 126 Hackathon project: OpenNHP — The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest

[Benfeng Chen <[e-mail]>]

OpenNHP is at *Table 14*. You are welcome to stop by.

On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 2:35 PM guest271314 <[e-mail]> wrote:

> > *Please try to break it.*
>
> I like it. All too often folks talk about "safety" and "security" within
> the scope of testing their own gear, in-house. That simply doesn't verify
> anything.
>
> I'll check out the details and pass around the idea
>
> von Braun believed in testing. I cannot
> emphasize that term enough – test, test,
> test. Test to the point it breaks.
> - Ed Buckbee, NASA Public Affairs Officer, Chasing the Moon
>
> On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 5:33 AM Benfeng Chen <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> The recent concerns surrounding autonomous AI-driven cyberattacks,
>> including discussions around systems such as *Claude Mythos*, may be
>> signaling a fundamental shift in cybersecurity: autonomous AI agents are
>> turning the Internet into a “*Dark Forest,*” where anything visible can
>> be discovered, probed, and exploited at machine speed.
>>
>> As described in the “Dark Forest” theory from Liu Cixin’s *The
>> Three-Body Problem*, the only reliable survival strategy in such an
>> environment may be *invisibility*. Rather than continuing the
>> decades-long cycle of exposing services and then attempting to defend them,
>> we are exploring a different question:
>>
>> *What if network infrastructure were invisible by default?*
>>
>> To explore this idea, I’ve added a project to the IETF 126 Hackathon wiki:
>>
>> *OpenNHP — Network-infrastructure Hiding Protocol (NHP)*
>>
>>
>> https://wiki.ietf.org/en/meeting/126/hackathon#opennhp-network-infrastructure-hiding-protocol-nhp
>>
>>
>> OpenNHP is an open-source implementation of the emerging
>> Network-infrastructure Hiding Protocol (NHP), an
>> authenticate-before-connect Zero Trust protocol designed to make protected
>> infrastructure inaccessible—and ideally undiscoverable—to unauthorized
>> entities.
>>
>> Unlike traditional security architectures that attempt to protect visible
>> services, NHP seeks to prevent reconnaissance, scanning, DDoS, and
>> pre-authentication exploitation by hiding network resources until
>> cryptographic authentication succeeds.
>>
>> For the IETF 126 Hackathon, we’re inviting the community to do something
>> simple:
>>
>> *Please try to break it.*
>>
>> We welcome participation from security researchers, protocol designers,
>> cryptographers, network engineers, DNS/TLS/PKI experts, AI security
>> researchers, and anyone who enjoys attacking assumptions.
>>
>> Potential challenge areas include:
>>
>>    - Discovering protected services without authentication
>>    - Enumerating hidden ports, IP addresses, or domain names
>>    - Performing reconnaissance against NHP-protected infrastructure
>>    - Bypassing authentication or authorization mechanisms
>>    - Exploiting pre-authentication attack surfaces
>>    - Testing resistance to DDoS and scanning attacks
>>    - Finding cryptographic weaknesses or protocol design flaws
>>    - Evaluating AI-assisted attack techniques
>>    - Testing interoperability and performance characteristics
>>    - Demonstrating any attack path that violates the
>>    “authenticate-before-connect” security model
>>
>> The challenge outcome is straightforward:
>>
>>    - If you can discover or access protected resources without
>>    successful authentication, we want to understand the weakness and fix it.
>>    - If you cannot, we collectively gain additional confidence in the
>>    security properties of the protocol.
>>
>> We believe that public adversarial testing, peer review, and running code
>> remain the best tools available for building trustworthy Internet security
>> protocols.
>>
>> Resources:
>>
>>    - Project website: OpenNHP Website <https://opennhp.org/>
>>    - Source code: OpenNHP GitHub Repository
>>    <https://github.com/OpenNHP/opennhp>⁠
>>    - Live demo: OpenNHP Demo Environment <https://opennhp.org/demo/>⁠
>>    - Internet-Draft: draft-opennhp-ztcpp-nhp
>>    <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-opennhp-ztcpp-nhp>⁠
>>
>> I’ll be participating in person at the Hackathon and would welcome
>> collaborators, critics, and especially skeptics.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Benfeng Chen
>> OpenNHP Project
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