Security threats and risks with content transformation intermediaries

Consumers, in contemporary networks, require transformation of the delivered content for numerous reasons. These include language translation, virus scanning, limited bandwidth and display capabilities and several others. Content transformation (CT) may be performed at either end of the network as well as in the middle of the network through intermediaries. As an example, the Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES) working group, in the IETF, addresses the issues related to the provision of CT services both at the edges as well as in the middle of the network. This paper is an attempt to define the security threats introduced by the inclusion of CT intermediaries. In addition to the threats, the effects of such security threats on the underlying architecture as well as the requirements of a security solution to mitigate such threats are discussed architecture as well as the requirements of a security solution to mitigate such threats are discussed.