Keynote Talk by Shuo Chen (Microsoft Research Redmond) - The Web as a multi-mind computing paradigm

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Presented at NDSS Symposium 2024 by

Shuo Chen

In this talk, I will share my reflection about web security research. There are a number of superficial understandings about the nature of web security issues, the focus of defense technologies and the emerging concept of Web3. To deepen these understandings, it is necessary to see the Web as a “multi-mind” computing paradigm, which has two fundamental characteristics: (1) it is an open platform on which people with potential conflicts of interest (COI) can add code modules; (2) app functionalities are achieved by running through multiple COI modules. These characteristics distinguish the Web from other computing paradigms, such as personal computing, cloud computing and even distributed computing. Recognizing the intrinsic multi-mind nature of the Web, I will use concrete examples to show some unique research angles. I will explain that web security problems are not general security problems manifested in the Web. Accordingly, there are novel promising approaches that are methodological for defense. In the last part of the talk, I will argue that Web3 is a natural next stage in the evolution of the Web.