SBIR Phase I: Decentralized Internet Access Management System with Post-Quantum Security

Award ID: 2035423

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to stop hackers from entering networks. The proposed approach will protect home owners from serious IT security threats posed by improperly configured IOT devices in an average household. Cloud computing and storage service providers, as well as regular website owners, discover new ways to mitigate attacks, manage server control commands, and deliver media content. Rapidly developing industries relying on a stable internet connection, such as autonomous vehicles and commercial drones, will have the opportunity to be protected from cyber threats with the proposed solution. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to discover new approaches to cybersecurity matters. In the traditional internet the number of available IPs and ports is rather small, making it easy to scan one's network and see potential vulnerabilities based on responses received. Instead of exposing network devices to everyone on the web 2.0, users will be able to put them behind the system proposed for development, which acts as an additional layer on top of the traditional TCP/IP concept. With the system listening only to the designated 32-byte long dynamically changing IPFS address the chances of guessing the right one is 1/2256, thus making it practically impossible to purposefully find the entrance. During the research and development process the project will work on the physical product realization, modify IPFS nodes, and design protocols responsible for decentralized VPN channels and media content delivery on the web 3.0, because solving latency issues will create new opportunities for the real-time communications on distributed networks. Another goal of this research effort is to mitigate the forthcoming threats imposed by the quantum computers, which will be achieved through the utilization of post-quantum encryption algorithms applicable to data transmitted through the traditional and decentralized mediums. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Anna Brady-Estevez