Rust London Ockam Takeover

An introduction to the actor programming model and how it is used by the ockam node ecosystem

Data, within modern distributed applications, are rarely exchanged over a single point-to-point transport connection. Application messages routinely flow over complex, multi-hop, multi-protocol routes — across data centers, through queues and caches, via gateways and brokers — before reaching their end destination.

Transport layer security protocols are unable to protect application messages because their protection is constrained by the length and duration of the underlying transport connection.

The Ockam crate makes it simple for our applications to guarantee end-to-end integrity, authenticity, and confidentiality of data.

We no longer have to implicitly depend on the defenses of every machine or application within the same, usually porous, network boundary. Our application's messages don't have to be vulnerable at every point, along their journey, where a transport connection terminates.

Instead, our application can have a strikingly smaller vulnerability surface and easily make granular authorization decisions about all incoming information and commands.

It this talk we'll dig into how Ockam works and how you can use it in your application.

Rust's emphasis on memory safety, performance and high-level abstraction make it uniquely suited to the the task of developing embedded systems within mission and safety-critical environments.

This talk will show off some of the work we're doing at Ockam to make Rust the preferred language for shipping IOT devices when trust matters and 256kB of RAM is a lot.