RFC: Zones of Distrust (ZoD) v0.9

Zones of Distrust (ZoD) is a layered security architecture for autonomous AI agents focused on separating reasoning from execution and enforcing runtime governance of privileged actions.

This repository is published as RFC v0.9 to invite peer review, adversarial critique, and real-world implementation feedback.

ZoD is intended to be complementary to existing security standards and frameworks, not a replacement.

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RFC Status

This is an early public release intended for open review.

• The architecture is stable enough for critique and prototyping.
• The specification and schemas are still evolving.
• Reference implementations are incomplete and should be treated as experimental.

Breaking changes may occur prior to v1.0.

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What This RFC Contains

This RFC release includes:

• ZoD white paper and supporting documentation
• ZoD companion specification (normative requirements)
• security properties and threat model
• JSON schemas for core artifacts (tokens, integrity events, delegation chains, memory events)
• ecosystem mappings (OWASP, NIST, MITRE ATLAS, Cisco, CSA, ENISA, CoSAI, SAIF, ISO/SOC2, etc.)
• early reference implementation scaffolding

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What This RFC Is Asking Reviewers to Evaluate

We specifically want critique on whether ZoD is defensible, implementable, and meaningfully improves agent security.

Key questions:

Architecture Validity

• Are the ZoD trust boundaries correct?
• Does the separation of reasoning and execution reduce real-world agent risk?
• Are Layers 4–5 defined clearly enough to prevent ambiguity?

Execution Token Model

• Is the execution token design sufficient to prevent replay, substitution, and parameter tampering?
• What should be bound into tokens (parameters, intent, context, chain metadata)?
• What failure modes are not covered by token binding?

Policy Enforcement

• Is ZoD-L2 semantic intent enforcement feasible at scale?
• Can policies remain enforceable without becoming brittle allowlists?
• Is "policy opacity" a valid security property or an operational risk?

Memory Audit and Baseline Integrity

• Is memory audit defined clearly enough to be actionable?
• What minimum provenance requirements should exist for memory writes?
• Is baseline integrity verification realistic, and what metrics should be standardized?

Integrity Signal Correlation

• What events must be emitted to enable reliable correlation?
• Can integrity logging be made tamper-resistant in real deployments?
• What is the minimum viable integrity signal channel implementation?

Multi-Agent Delegation Chains

• Are delegation chain schemas sufficient to prevent chain abuse?
• How should chain risk scoring be defined?
• What are the strongest known multi-agent escalation patterns that ZoD must address?

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Out of Scope (For v0.9)

ZoD does not claim to solve all AI security problems.

The following are considered out of scope unless explicitly addressed:

• model training security and dataset provenance
• model extraction prevention
• hardware enclave security guarantees
• full OS-level agent isolation primitives
• general AI alignment and value alignment problems
• prevention of hallucination (ZoD focuses on constraining hallucinated execution)

ZoD assumes standard security practices exist for:

• IAM and identity management
• TLS and key management
• OS hardening
• network segmentation
• dependency and supply chain security

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What Would Make This RFC "Successful"

This RFC is considered successful if it produces:

• actionable critiques that improve the spec
• adversarial test cases that challenge ZoD assumptions
• implementable reference patterns for CA + executor enforcement
• stronger schema definitions for tokens, integrity events, and memory events
• early adopters who prototype ZoD-L1 or ZoD-L2 deployments
• contributors who expand the attack harness and compliance mappings

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How to Provide Feedback

We welcome feedback through:

• GitHub Issues (architecture critiques, schema issues, policy gaps)
• Pull Requests (documentation/spec improvements, test cases, schemas)
• GitHub Discussions (broader debates and design questions)

If you believe you found a security vulnerability in any reference implementation code, please report it privately:

security@bluvi.ai

See: SECURITY.md

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Versioning

This repository is released as ZoD v0.9.

Breaking changes may occur prior to v1.0 as peer review and implementation feedback is incorporated.

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Attribution and Licensing

ZoD is dual-licensed:

• specification and documentation: CC BY 4.0
• code and reference implementation: Apache 2.0

See:

• LICENSE
• LICENSE-CC-BY
• LICENSES.md

If you use this work in research or publication, please cite using CITATION.cff.