@techreport{das-consequence-path-completeness-00,
    number =    {draft-das-consequence-path-completeness-00},
    type =      {Internet-Draft},
    institution =   {Internet Engineering Task Force},
    publisher = {Internet Engineering Task Force},
    note =      {Work in Progress},
    url =       {https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-das-consequence-path-completeness/00/},
    author =    {Sangam Das},
    title =     {{When the Gate Can Be Bypassed: Consequence-Path Completeness for Execution Finality}},
    pagetotal = 64,
    year =      2026,
    month =     sep,
    day =       15,
    abstract =  {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.},
}