Remote ATtestation procedureS D. Condrey Internet-Draft WritersLogic Intended status: Standards Track 14 February 2026 Expires: 18 August 2026 Proof of Process (PoP): Architecture, Evidence Format, and VDF draft-condrey-rats-pop-protocol-01 Abstract This document specifies the Proof of Process (PoP) protocol, a specialized profile of Remote Attestation Procedures (RATS) designed to validate digital authorship through a "provenance of effort." It defines the core architecture, the RATS role mappings, the normative CBOR-encoded Evidence Format (including EAT integration), and the Verifiable Delay Function (VDF) mechanisms used to prove temporal and physical creation constraints. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on 18 August 2026. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. Condrey Expires 18 August 2026 [Page 1] Internet-Draft PoP Protocol February 2026 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/ license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Core Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3. RATS Role Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4. Attester State Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5. Evidence Content Tiers and Assurance Levels . . . . . . . . . 3 6. Evidence Format and CDDL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 7. VDF and Temporal Proofs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7.1. Hardware-Anchored Time (HAT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7.2. Non-deterministic Physical Freshness . . . . . . . . . . 5 8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1. Introduction The rapid proliferation of generative artificial intelligence has created an authenticity crisis in digital discourse. While traditional provenance tracks the "custody of pixels," it fails to attest to the human-driven process of creation. This document specifies the Proof of Process (PoP) protocol, which extends the RATS architecture [RFC9334] to validate the "provenance of effort." 2. Core Principles The PoP framework is built upon five foundational pillars: * *Physics-based Cost:* Using memory-hard sequential functions (Argon2id) to establish an economic lower bound on forgery. * *Physical Freshness:* Anchoring sessions to non-deterministic physical markers (e.g., thermal noise) to prevent replay. Condrey Expires 18 August 2026 [Page 2] Internet-Draft PoP Protocol February 2026 * *Biological Binding:* Entangling human motor-signal jitter as a non-deterministic seed for cryptographic proofs generated within the Attesting Environment (AE). * *Out-of-Band Presence:* Utilizing secondary physical devices (e.g., smartphone QR scans) to bridge the digital-physical gap. * *Asymmetric Verification:* Ensuring that complex, long-duration proofs can be verified efficiently by third parties. 3. RATS Role Mapping Attester: The writing environment (e.g., a text editor or OS service) that captures behavioral events and generates PoP Evidence packets (.pop). Verifier: A trusted entity that appraises PoP Evidence and issues a Writers Authenticity Report (WAR). Relying Party: An end-user or system that consumes the WAR to make a trust decision. 4. Attester State Machine To ensure protocol robustness, the Attesting Environment (AE) MUST implement a formal state machine: * *RECORDING:* AE captures semantic events and physical telemetry into a hash-linked buffer. * *PENDING_CHECK:* The event block is frozen to initiate a VDF proof. * *CHECKPOINT:* AE computes the VDF and weaves the entangled seed into the chain. * *SEALING:* The final transcript root is signed by the hardware Secure Element. 5. Evidence Content Tiers and Assurance Levels PoP Evidence is classified by both content depth (CORE, ENHANCED, MAXIMUM) and attestation assurance strength (T1-T4): Condrey Expires 18 August 2026 [Page 3] Internet-Draft PoP Protocol February 2026 +======+========================+==========+===========+ | Tier | Binding Strength | NIST AAL | EAT Level | +======+========================+==========+===========+ | T1 | Software-only | AAL1 | 0-1 | +------+------------------------+----------+-----------+ | T2 | Opportunistic hardware | AAL1-2 | 1-2 | +------+------------------------+----------+-----------+ | T3 | Required TPM/Enclave | AAL3 | 3 | +------+------------------------+----------+-----------+ | T4 | Discrete TPM + PUF | AAL3+ | 3+ | +------+------------------------+----------+-----------+ Table 1 6. Evidence Format and CDDL Evidence Packets are identified by the semantic CBOR tag *1347571280*. evidence-packet = { 1 => uint, ; version 2 => tstr, ; profile-uri 3 => uuid, ; packet-id 4 => pop-timestamp, ; created 5 => document-ref, ; document 6 => [+ checkpoint], ; checkpoints ? 7 => attestation-tier, ; T1-T4 assurance level ? 8 => [* tstr], ; attestation-limitations ? 10 => [+ presence-challenge], ; QR/OOB presence proofs ? 18 => physical-liveness-section, ; CDCE markers } checkpoint = { 1 => uint, ; sequence (strictly monotonic) 2 => uuid, ; checkpoint-id 4 => hash-value, ; content-hash 9 => process-proof, ; process-proof (VDF) 10 => jitter-binding, ; behavioral-entropy 11 => physical-state, ; Thermal/Entropy Weave 12 => bstr .size 32, ; entangled-mac (HMAC-SHA256) } document-ref = { 1 => hash-value, ; content-hash 3 => uint, ; byte-length ? 5 => hash-salt-mode, ; 0=unsalted, 1=author-salted ? 6 => bstr, ; salt-commitment } Condrey Expires 18 August 2026 [Page 4] Internet-Draft PoP Protocol February 2026 7. VDF and Temporal Proofs Implementations MUST support *Argon2id* [RFC9106] as the MTI memory- hard function. 7.1. Hardware-Anchored Time (HAT) In T3/T4 tiers, the AE MUST anchor the VDF seed to a *TPM Monotonic Counter*. hat-seed = H(tpm-counter || physical-freshness || document-hash) 7.2. Non-deterministic Physical Freshness To prevent replay, the VDF seed MUST incorporate physical markers (thermal noise/kernel entropy) sampled within the AE at the start of the session. 8. IANA Considerations This document requests registration of CBOR tags 1347571280 ("PPP ") and 1463894560 ("WAR "), and the EAT profile urn:ietf:params:rats:eat:profile:pop:1.0. 9. Security Considerations The primary security goal is to provide tamper-evident records of document evolution. Implementations MUST validate all CDDL constraints and ensure checkpoint sequence monotonicity. 10. References 10.1. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, . [RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, May 2017, . [RFC8610] Birkholz, H., Vigano, C., and C. Bormann, "Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL): A Notational Convention to Express Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) and JSON Data Structures", RFC 8610, DOI 10.17487/RFC8610, June 2019, . Condrey Expires 18 August 2026 [Page 5] Internet-Draft PoP Protocol February 2026 [RFC8949] Bormann, C. and P. Hoffman, "Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR)", STD 94, RFC 8949, DOI 10.17487/RFC8949, December 2020, . [RFC9106] Biryukov, A., Dinu, D., Khovratovich, D., and S. Josefsson, "Argon2 Memory-Hard Function for Password Hashing and Proof-of-Work Applications", RFC 9106, DOI 10.17487/RFC9106, September 2021, . [RFC9334] Birkholz, H., Thaler, D., Richardson, M., Smith, N., and W. Pan, "Remote ATtestation procedureS (RATS) Architecture", RFC 9334, DOI 10.17487/RFC9334, January 2023, . [RFC9711] Lundblade, L., Mandyam, G., O'Donoghue, J., and C. Wallace, "The Entity Attestation Token (EAT)", RFC 9711, DOI 10.17487/RFC9711, April 2025, . 10.2. Informative References [Pietrzak2019] Pietrzak, K., "Simple Verifiable Delay Functions", 2019, . [PoP-Appraisal] Condrey, D., "Proof of Process (PoP): Forensic Appraisal and Security Model", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-condrey-rats-pop-appraisal-00, 2026, . Author's Address David Condrey WritersLogic Inc San Diego, California, United States Email: david@writerslogic.com Condrey Expires 18 August 2026 [Page 6]