The Ployglot Computer

Abstract

Performing security verifications on a compromised system can give a false sense of security. If compromised, a computer system can return false results, thus "deceiving" the verification process. Our motivation for this work is straightforward: Computers should not be trusted, at least not when they are attesting their own integrity. In our project Babel, this problem is addressed by, quite literally, thinking outside the box. Babel introduces an architecture where the user's computer is unable to execute any program by itself and depends on an external entity to execute any application. Taking into consideration the advances in computer network and cloud computing, we move the verification process to outside the physical limits of the computer. Babel can be mistaken for yet another instance of extant approaches. In this paper, we revisit the Babel architecture with the twofold intention of clarifying what Babel is and showing how Babel differs from previous work.