4th workshop on recent advances in intrusion-tolerant systems WRAITS 2010

Design and operational vulnerabilities are accepted as inevitable in today´s complex computer systems. The distributed and networked nature of the systems that are currently in use and being developed facilitate discovery and exploitation of these flaws in increasingly new and easier ways. Intrusion Tolerance acknowledges that it is impossible to completely prevent attacks and intrusions, and that it is often impossible to accurately detect the act of intrusion and stop it early enough. Intrusion Tolerance research therefore aims to develop technologies that enable computer systems to continue to operate correctly despite attacks, and deny the attacker/intruder the success they seek. For instance, an intrusion-tolerant system may suffer partial loss of service or resources due to the attack, but it will continue to provide critical services in a degraded mode or trigger automatic mechanisms to regain and recover the compromised services and resources. Similar goals are being pursued in Survivability, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, Self-regenerative and Autonomic Systems.