In this talk, I present our approach of building defensive computer systems by augmenting their hardware or software architecture with trusted intelligent backdoors. An intelligent backdoor can be programmed to perform automated observation and intervention on a computer system without involving its operating system, and can communicate with other backdoors over private networks. Backdoors can be realized in hardware using a programmable network interface or in software over a virtual machine monitor. In this talk, I will present our results in prototyping a backdoor-based architecture for remote repairing and recovery, and I will outline our plans to further exploit its potential. Liviu Iftode is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers University, New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University in 1998. His research interests include distributed systems, operating systems, mobile networking and pervasive computing. Most of his work has been conducted with his students in the Distributed Computing (DISCO) Laboratory at Rutgers (http://discolab.rutgers.edu).

Liviu Iftode is the vice-chair of IEEE Technical Committee on Operating Systems and a member of the editorial boards of IEEE Pervasive Computing and IEEE Distributed Systems Online. He served in numerous program committees of technical conferences. More information can be found at http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~iftode.