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

[guest271314 <[e-mail]>]

> *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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