State Tracking and Verification for Distributed Nodes through Traffic Inspection

Keeping track of protocol, node, or system states in a distributed network is non-trivial. However, state tracking combined with predefined allowed transitions for each state is essential to verify that nodes adhere to the specification and, finally, to detect faulty or malicious nodes. Typically, existing systems only consider context in network flows instead of the full states or use a simplified state model. Therefore, we examine challenges and factors influencing a state tracking and verification system.