4 ms·

""" Beyond Zero shifts the trust boundary from the application to the action being performed on a piece of data in realtime—and from after-the-fact investigatio

by kriro 2mo ago

""" Beyond Zero shifts the trust boundary from the application to the action being performed on a piece of data in realtime—and from after-the-fact investigation to in-the-moment evaluation and containment. It augments BeyondCorp’s foundational identity with a “brain” capable of reasoning about the context and intent of a specific request in realtime. """ Doesn't this simply shift the attack vector? Compromising this overlord brain now becomes a new target.

thesuitonym 2mo ago
All security measures "simply shift the attack vector." The idea is to shift it to something that is more difficult to compromise.
- antonvs 2mo ago
  This is oversimplifying. For example, encryption at rest or in transit essentially eliminates attack vectors. The possible attack avenues necessarily shift as a result, but only because an avenue was blocked. That's very different from e.g. adding a layer of protection around something insecure, where the insecure thing remains insecure inside the protection, which I think is what the other commenter was imagining. Similarly, memory safe languages (including most GC languages, not just a certain language beginning with R) eliminate entire classes of security hole. Again, the possible attack vectors necessarily "shift", but that doesn't capture the fact that you've entirely eliminated a class of attacks. The same goes for eliminating unnecessary services, firewall holes, etc. None of these are specifically trying to "shift it to something to something that is more difficult to compromise." They're entirely blocking attack vectors, and the strength or weakness of other parts of the system aren't really a factor.
  - ikiris 2mo ago
    What? Encryption has never eliminated attack vectors, it just shifts them to weaknesses in the implementation
    - antonvs 2mo ago
      Eliminating an attack vector means stopping a specific path or method that can be used to break into a system. "Shift" in this context means that the attacker has to use a different attack vector. They can no longer just access plain text.
      - ikiris 2mo ago
        Yes, those are the definitions everyone is working with.
  - madeofpalk 2mo ago
    Doesn’t encryption shift the attack vector to the key and/or the method?
    - antonvs 2mo ago
      That's a different attack vector. The attack vector that involves accessing plain text has been eliminated. An attack vector is a specific path or method that can be used to break into a system.
      - orf 2mo ago
        > That's a different attack vector So you’re saying that the attack vector has… shifted.
        antonvs 2mo ago
        No. The attack vector has changed to a different attack vector. In English, the word "the" in "the attack vector has shifted" is a definite article that refers to a single attack vector. If your car breaks down and you switch to using a different car, would you say "the car has shifted"? Speaking loosely, one might use "the attack vector has shifted" to mean something like "the possible attack vectors have changed", but that kind of looseness is misleading in an absolute claim like the one I originally responded to, about "all security measures". In fact, it would be more accurate to say that no security measures "shift the attack vector".
        kirab 2mo ago
        You are confusing attack target and attack vector I think. A vector here is the attack angle/direction. Of course I can shift my direction and then target another car.
thomascgalvin 2mo ago
This is a layer on top of normal security, so this isn't a matter of compromising the "brain" instead of RBAC, etc, but in addition to. Attribute-based access control is already a thing. User X logs in the US East between the hours of 6am and 6pm. If User X logs in from Russia at 3am, deny access. This seems like an evolution of that pattern
butterclaw-tech 2mo ago
One partial answer is to not make it a single brain. If the reasoning layer that evaluates a request is independently audited by a second pass at lower temperature with an explicit skepticism mandate, compromising the evaluator requires compromising both passes simultaneously — and they're running the same local model with different system prompts and no shared state between them. Doesn't eliminate the attack surface but raises the cost considerably compared to a single inference gate.
zobzu 2mo ago
these are just fluff words, not a revolutionary change. zero trust helped a lot because it forced vendors to stop relying on people magically doing the right thing ina centralized system. it decentralized boundaries. this paper just says you still need deterministic boundaries and access control, not just have an llm say safe or unsafe. cool thanks google haha. ps: hi guys, i know yall reading. sometimes its not the concept, its the implementation. else active shield or whatever would have worked too. not everyone can be the T7-9 thinker if implementing is seen as "for peasants"
sroussey 2mo ago
Google already has a system where data and access control are combined as part of shared docs. I think Zanzibar for docs themselves on GDrive. Not sure the name of the system that manages a portion of a document in a shared doc which colocates data and access data. This seems like a next generation of that?
rawgabbit 2mo ago
Before zero trust, once you logged in, you have access to the entire kingdom of resources/files/APIs etc. To me, this sounds like zero trust version 2.0. The "brain" challenges agentic AI trying to access resources it normally doesn't access. Personally, I like the name "Beyond Zero" because it isn't oxymoronic like "Zero Trust".
- galactushonor 2mo ago
  I have a simple question. When a company gets compromised, how come there are no alarms when TBs of data gets egressed?
  - idkyall 2mo ago
    At a high level it's possible to alarm on data egress, but at the same time it depends on the type and degree of compromise we're discussing and how the attacker exfiltrates the data. If an intruder isn't detected, they could slowly egress the data to borrowed residential IPs, rather than a giant multi TB transfer that might set off more obvious alarms. For a large enough organization with substantial outbound traffic to start, it can become incredibly hard to distinguish from legitimate activity.
  - rawgabbit 2mo ago
    Organizations today run every SAAS under the sun. Files and data are wired up in a hodgepodge with security usually being an afterthought. There are companies like Big Banks that do monitor all network traffic including traffic to their provisioned Google Drive or Clickhouse. A lot of companies only have logs which they feed to an alerting system which is after the fact.
  - kbart 2mo ago
    That's a survirvorship bias - we normally only hear of the attacks that succeed, not the ones that have been successfully prevented.
  - UltraSane 2mo ago
    This can be done but takes work and is prone to false positives. I personally got a email from out network team asking what I was doing when I downloaded some very large files on a VM in our test environment. I was impressed.

by kriro 2mo ago

thesuitonym 2mo ago

All security measures "simply shift the attack vector." The idea is to shift it to something that is more difficult to compromise.

antonvs 2mo ago
This is oversimplifying. For example, encryption at rest or in transit essentially eliminates attack vectors. The possible attack avenues necessarily shift as a result, but only because an avenue was blocked. That's very different from e.g. adding a layer of protection around something insecure, where the insecure thing remains insecure inside the protection, which I think is what the other commenter was imagining. Similarly, memory safe languages (including most GC languages, not just a certain language beginning with R) eliminate entire classes of security hole. Again, the possible attack vectors necessarily "shift", but that doesn't capture the fact that you've entirely eliminated a class of attacks. The same goes for eliminating unnecessary services, firewall holes, etc. None of these are specifically trying to "shift it to something to something that is more difficult to compromise." They're entirely blocking attack vectors, and the strength or weakness of other parts of the system aren't really a factor.
- ikiris 2mo ago
  What? Encryption has never eliminated attack vectors, it just shifts them to weaknesses in the implementation
  - antonvs 2mo ago
    Eliminating an attack vector means stopping a specific path or method that can be used to break into a system. "Shift" in this context means that the attacker has to use a different attack vector. They can no longer just access plain text.
    - ikiris 2mo ago
      Yes, those are the definitions everyone is working with.
- madeofpalk 2mo ago
  Doesn’t encryption shift the attack vector to the key and/or the method?
  - antonvs 2mo ago
    That's a different attack vector. The attack vector that involves accessing plain text has been eliminated. An attack vector is a specific path or method that can be used to break into a system.
    - orf 2mo ago
      > That's a different attack vector So you’re saying that the attack vector has… shifted.
      - antonvs 2mo ago
        No. The attack vector has changed to a different attack vector. In English, the word "the" in "the attack vector has shifted" is a definite article that refers to a single attack vector. If your car breaks down and you switch to using a different car, would you say "the car has shifted"? Speaking loosely, one might use "the attack vector has shifted" to mean something like "the possible attack vectors have changed", but that kind of looseness is misleading in an absolute claim like the one I originally responded to, about "all security measures". In fact, it would be more accurate to say that no security measures "shift the attack vector".
        kirab 2mo ago
        You are confusing attack target and attack vector I think. A vector here is the attack angle/direction. Of course I can shift my direction and then target another car.

thomascgalvin 2mo ago

This is a layer on top of normal security, so this isn't a matter of compromising the "brain" instead of RBAC, etc, but in addition to. Attribute-based access control is already a thing. User X logs in the US East between the hours of 6am and 6pm. If User X logs in from Russia at 3am, deny access. This seems like an evolution of that pattern

butterclaw-tech 2mo ago

One partial answer is to not make it a single brain. If the reasoning layer that evaluates a request is independently audited by a second pass at lower temperature with an explicit skepticism mandate, compromising the evaluator requires compromising both passes simultaneously — and they're running the same local model with different system prompts and no shared state between them. Doesn't eliminate the attack surface but raises the cost considerably compared to a single inference gate.

zobzu 2mo ago

these are just fluff words, not a revolutionary change. zero trust helped a lot because it forced vendors to stop relying on people magically doing the right thing ina centralized system. it decentralized boundaries. this paper just says you still need deterministic boundaries and access control, not just have an llm say safe or unsafe. cool thanks google haha. ps: hi guys, i know yall reading. sometimes its not the concept, its the implementation. else active shield or whatever would have worked too. not everyone can be the T7-9 thinker if implementing is seen as "for peasants"

sroussey 2mo ago

Google already has a system where data and access control are combined as part of shared docs. I think Zanzibar for docs themselves on GDrive. Not sure the name of the system that manages a portion of a document in a shared doc which colocates data and access data. This seems like a next generation of that?

rawgabbit 2mo ago

Before zero trust, once you logged in, you have access to the entire kingdom of resources/files/APIs etc. To me, this sounds like zero trust version 2.0. The "brain" challenges agentic AI trying to access resources it normally doesn't access. Personally, I like the name "Beyond Zero" because it isn't oxymoronic like "Zero Trust".

galactushonor 2mo ago
I have a simple question. When a company gets compromised, how come there are no alarms when TBs of data gets egressed?
- idkyall 2mo ago
  At a high level it's possible to alarm on data egress, but at the same time it depends on the type and degree of compromise we're discussing and how the attacker exfiltrates the data. If an intruder isn't detected, they could slowly egress the data to borrowed residential IPs, rather than a giant multi TB transfer that might set off more obvious alarms. For a large enough organization with substantial outbound traffic to start, it can become incredibly hard to distinguish from legitimate activity.
- rawgabbit 2mo ago
  Organizations today run every SAAS under the sun. Files and data are wired up in a hodgepodge with security usually being an afterthought. There are companies like Big Banks that do monitor all network traffic including traffic to their provisioned Google Drive or Clickhouse. A lot of companies only have logs which they feed to an alerting system which is after the fact.
- kbart 2mo ago
  That's a survirvorship bias - we normally only hear of the attacks that succeed, not the ones that have been successfully prevented.
- UltraSane 2mo ago
  This can be done but takes work and is prone to false positives. I personally got a email from out network team asking what I was doing when I downloaded some very large files on a VM in our test environment. I was impressed.