Abstract

The rapidly changing and expanding electronic environment is fundamentally different from anything mankind has previously experienced. The challenge of information surety is to assure that computation and information behave reasonably and predictably – despite malice, failure and human nature – in this hostile and dynamic environment. Addressing this challenge is urgent for national and economic security, but requires both the ability to express the necessary robustness properties for electronic objects, as well as the ability to develop technology to achieve these properties. This position paper expands on these problems, and presents some solution strategies. 1. The Problem An aphorism that we often need to repeat is “the electronic world is not the same as the physical world. ” Securely moving physical and paper-based processes into electronic settings requires understanding which behaviors and metaphors still apply—and which ones change. As more commerce and service applications migrate to the Internet, the lack of this understanding will lead to security and privacy weaknesses in these services. Future research needs to address this knowledge gap. Humanity has had millennia to develop an understanding of how paper works: what properties it possesses innately, what additional properties it needs (in order provide secure foundations for higher-level applications), and what controls

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