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Security in AIGrid v0.1: Foundations, Scope, and Gaps

Security is a critical and non-negotiable pillar of any foundational infrastructure — especially in the context of open, decentralized AI. While AIGrid is architected with security as a first-class principle, the v0.1 alpha release intentionally prioritizes the implementation and validation of core protocols and architectural primitives. As such, security in this version exists in two complementary layers:

Protocol-Native Security (PolicyGrid)

AIGrid v0.1 ships with PolicyGrid — a programmable, protocol-native architecture for security, trust, and accountability. It enables context-aware, Turing-complete policy expressions that govern (illustrative list – not comprehensive):

  • Access control
  • Actor behavior
  • Inter-actor interactions
  • Task fulfillment and job verification
  • Resource management

Policies can be scoped globally, locally, or contextually — embedding trust, coordination, ethical alignment, and enforceable rules directly into the execution layer of the network.

For more details, see the Policy Grid: Programmable, Turing-Complete Trust, Governance and Security for Networked AI, a dedicated PolicyGrid section.

Baseline Infrastructure Security

AIGrid v0.1 inherits foundational security from its deployment stack, including:

  • VM-level isolation – Enforced process and OS boundaries
  • Containerization (Docker) – Isolated environments, image verification, sandboxing
  • Kubernetes (K8s) security policies, including:
  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
  • Namespace isolation
  • Network policies (ingress/egress)
  • Pod security controls (e.g., OPA Gatekeeper)
  • TLS for service communication and secret management

These measures offer reasonable protection for multi-tenancy, inter-service integrity, and safe orchestration. Edge-layer protections — such as API key auth, reverse proxies, and adapter-level permission controls — can further augment deployments in semi-trusted environments.

Known Security Limitations in v0.1

While PolicyGrid and infrastructure security establish important baselines, several critical security capabilities are not yet implemented in v0.1. These are expected to be developed in collaboration with community contributors, third-party integrations, and future releases.

  • Formal Verification of Policies
  • No static analysis, termination guarantees, or correctness validation for policy logic.
  • Identity and Access Management (IAM)
  • No native system for identity issuance, revocation, federation, or decentralized ID.
  • Fine-Grained Access Control (RBAC/ABAC)
  • No integrated support for role-based or attribute-based access enforcement across modules and agents.
  • Data Confidentiality and Encryption
  • No built-in encryption at rest, in transit, or support for encrypted computation.
  • Immutable Logging, Auditing, and Provenance
  • No tamper-proof audit trails, verifiable execution records, or lifecycle tracking for agents and modules.
  • Secrets Management and Key Infrastructure
  • No secure vaults, secret injection mechanisms, key rotation, or access control over credentials.
  • Hardware-Assisted Security
  • No integration with TPM, Intel SGX, AMD SEV, or other trusted execution environments (TEEs).
  • Container and Process-Level Runtime Hardening
  • No enforcement of runtime security profiles (e.g., AppArmor, seccomp), syscall filtering, or mandatory access control.
  • Model Security and Integrity
  • No protections against model tampering, adversarial manipulation, unauthorized versioning, or provenance loss.
  • Denial-of-Service (DoS/DDoS) Resistance
  • No mitigation against compute abuse, flooding, or network exhaustion by malicious or compromised agents.
  • Rate Limiting and Resource Quotas
  • No enforcement of per-agent quotas, rate control, or circuit breakers for abuse prevention.
  • Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC) and Federated Learning
  • No native support for confidential, collaborative computation across untrusted nodes.
  • Secure Software Supply Chain
  • No provenance verification for code dependencies, model modules, or container images.
  • Database Security and Data Access Controls
  • No native controls for securing database queries, access scopes, or protection against injection attacks.
  • No built-in database-level authentication, encryption, or query policy enforcement.

Deployment Guidance

Given the current limitations, AIGrid v0.1 is best suited for trusted or semi-trusted environments such as:

  • Local, private deployments within enterprises
  • Closed research collaboratives
  • Testnets and developer sandboxes
  • Federated orgs/labs or experimental deployments with known contributors

Security at this stage is best complemented by edge hardening, manual trust assumptions, and community vigilance.

Roadmap and Security Philosophy

Security in AIGrid will be modular, extensible, and community-shaped — enabling different zones of the network to adopt their own risk models and defensive postures. Many of the limitations listed above are planned for near-term development or targeted for integration with existing open-source solutions.

v0.2 and beyond will focus heavily on:

  • Model security: IP Protection, access control & usage policies, Integrity, Provence & lineage
  • Decentralized identity
  • Role- and attribute-based access control
  • Cryptographic Infrastructure: support for signing, verification, PKI, and integrity guarantees across modules and transactions
  • Secure agent execution
  • Federated trust frameworks