MetaStreme proposes ‘RouterSV’ for more secure network traffic logs on Bitcoin

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Who’s accessing your network, and when? Publishing traffic logs to the Bitcoin blockchain could help sysadmins share information to keep their networks more secure, says MetaStreme founder Paul Chiari. His company this week teased an upcoming project it called RouterSV, another non-financial use for high-volume data processing on BSV (but with financial incentives built in).

Introducing a new project prototype 'RouterSV' launched on MetaStreme.

Hack proof router logs stored on an immutable ledger.

Earn #BSV by contributing to shared intelligence blacklists that help protect your network from known attackers. pic.twitter.com/vnPYQmS8rk

— MetaStreme (@MetaStreme) November 2, 2020

Although MetaStreme described RouterSV as a “project prototype,” Chiari said the company itself and some of its clients are already using a similar system to publish their logs to the BSV blockchain. He also invited anyone experienced with syslog records who might be interested in the project to get in touch.

Publishing such log files to the Bitcoin blockchain would have a number of benefits. Firstly, it would make those records un-alterable and permanently auditable. Secondly, it would allow network engineers to share information and create better blacklists against those it considers bad actors, putting the information in more hands. And thirdly, it would allow an incentive system such as RouterSV’s to automatically reward those providing useful information.

Bitcoin BSV’s position as the only blockchain with the capacity to process transactions for any big data project, and its ability to limit access to that data only to those authorized to do so, are also key advantages.

MetaStreme launched in mid-2020 as a “wallet” for IoT devices writing transactions to the BSV blockchain, accessed via APIs. It has partnered with several companies using these technologies, particularly ecological data projects and those developing tokenized systems.

In addition to MetaStreme, Chiari is the founder of WeatherSV—a pioneer in demonstrating Bitcoin BSV’s ability to process microtransactions in extremely large volumes every day.

CoinGeek spoke briefly to Paul Chiari about how RouterSV might work, and what sort of plans he has for the project.

Could you give us a rough idea of how RouterSV works (or is structured/automated)?

RouterSV takes logs collected by a router or other network devices and stores them to a syslog server which then writes that data to the BSV ledger. Syslog is a commonly used protocol by routers, servers, switches and other network devices. It allows the collection of system and security logs of multiple devices to be collected into a single database.

We also plan to utilize the shared intelligence of collected data to maintain blacklists which could reward the contributors with a share of any revenue generated through access to that intelligence.

How did you come up with the idea?

This is an idea I heard Dr. Craig Wright talk about some time ago, perhaps in regard to his own misadventures with network security and he also mentioned it again recently on the Beaver Moon BitcoinSV channel interview.

Why router logs? (as opposed to other log files an attacker might want to alter)

Router logs are clearly important especially when they are the gateway between private and public networks, however other server and network device logs can be captured in a similar fashion if required due to widespread support of the syslog protocol.

How advanced is the RouterSV prototype, and when would you estimate it will be ready to go live?

As we are an IT service provider it is live in a sense, as we using it for ourselves and some clients. We saw it beneficial as a tool within our own business to add value to our service offerings and use the shared intelligence of multiple routers that we managed to better identify attackers and threats.

More work would need to happen to make it into an end user product, however MetaStreme makes it relatively trivial to add new data sources and develop the back end for a product such as this.

Just one other thing that might be worth adding is that, while we do not have a consumer front-end at this stage, anyone with sufficient technical knowledge to filter and forward syslog events they want to record to the BSV ledger are invited to get in touch to test the service.

Can you give a rough figure of how many people are using MetaStreme services at the moment? Or if not, what they’re using it for?

MetaStreme currently supports Elas Digital tokens, B-Vote from Eli Afram and our own projects WeatherSV, RouterSV and AirSV (air quality data). We are also working with some other partners such as Predict Ecology to bring their ideas onto the ledger.

Additionally we have had over 100 applicants for our Beta network which runs on the BSV test network, which is a good sign that projects are being developed and we hope that many of them progress to our main net instance in the near future.

See also: CoinGeek Live presentation, Internet of Things & Big Data on the Bitcoin SV Blockchain