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<reference anchor="I-D.das-consequence-path-completeness" target="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-das-consequence-path-completeness-00">
   <front>
      <title>When the Gate Can Be Bypassed: Consequence-Path Completeness for Execution Finality</title>
      <author initials="S." surname="Das" fullname="Sangam Das">
         <organization>Independent</organization>
      </author>
      <date month="September" day="15" year="2026" />
      <abstract>
	 <t>   A perfectly correct authorization or security gate does not prevent a
   protected consequence if the same effect remains technically
   reachable through another path.  High-consequence systems commonly
   place authentication, authorization, policy, attestation, or
   execution-finality checks at identified API, gateway, Resource
   Server, operating-system, service-perimeter, or hardware boundaries.
   The vulnerability examined here is therefore a coverage failure: the
   protected gate can be sound while the effect can go around it.  This
   deserves high attention where the bypass can produce irreversible,
   financial, safety-relevant, privacy-sensitive, sovereign, or mission-
   critical consequences.

   Existing security architecture already addresses important parts of
   this problem.  The reference-monitor concept requires complete
   mediation, tamper resistance, and verifiability; OAuth Resource
   Servers validate authorization for requests they receive; gateways,
   service meshes, cloud policy systems, and service perimeters mediate
   configured flows; RATS provides trust evidence for components; and
   confidential-computing or hardware isolation can provide protected
   enforcement locations.  If any existing mechanism actually mediates
   every route capable of producing the defined consequence under the
   stated threat model, that deployment already satisfies the core
   property described here and no additional component is required
   merely for duplication.

   The residual problem arises when enforcement coverage is narrower
   than the consequence: for example, when an approved API hands work to
   a queue or database with other ingress paths, a service perimeter
   covers selected services while another interface remains effect-
   capable, or a software gate coexists with administrative, recovery,
   device, DMA, storage, or management-plane routes.  This document
   introduces a consequence-oriented execution-finality formulation: a
   Protected Consequence K, an Effectuation Domain D, a generation-
   indexed directed Effectuation Graph G_g, an Effectuation Path Set
   P_g(K,D), a Finality Cut Set F, and a protected Path-Set Generation
   g.  Prevention is claimed only when removal of the valid enforcement
   set F disconnects every admissible source from the consequence node,
   every member of F enforces an equivalent load-bearing finality
   predicate, and topology changes cannot silently inherit an older
   completeness claim.

   Where path discovery is incomplete, enforcement is bypassable,
   topology state is stale, or only selected interfaces are covered, the
   mechanism is mitigation or detection rather than the same prevention
   guarantee.  The model is relevant to AI-agent tool execution, cloud
   authorization, service meshes, financial and database commits,
   operating-system and device actions, confidential computing,
   accelerator/DPU/SmartNIC infrastructure, and industrial control.
   Microsoft Azure Policy, Amazon Verified Permissions/Cedar, Google
   Cloud VPC Service Controls, NVIDIA attestation, and Arm CCA are cited
   only as complementary industrial comparison or integration points,
   not as assertions of vulnerability, deficiency, non-conformance,
   affiliation, or endorsement.

   The proposed delta is not invention of complete mediation.  It is an
   explicit, testable mapping of complete-mediation reasoning to a
   protected consequence across heterogeneous distributed software and
   hardware paths, with coverage bound to a topology generation and to
   effectuation-time finality.  Criticism, corrections, counterexamples,
   prior-art pointers, evidence of equivalent existing mechanisms, and
   cases where path completeness cannot be established at acceptable
   cost are explicitly invited.

	 </t>
      </abstract>
   </front>
   <seriesInfo name="Internet-Draft" value="draft-das-consequence-path-completeness-00" />
   
</reference>
