Disaster Recovery Plan — Phoenix Protocol

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Recovery Objectives

Metric	Target	Maximum Tolerable
RTO (Recovery Time Objective)	< 4 hours	8 hours
RPO (Recovery Point Objective)	< 1 hour	4 hours
Chamber Fleet Restore	< 2 hours	4 hours
Evidence Store Restore	< 1 hour	2 hours
Attestation Service	< 30 minutes	1 hour

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Disaster Scenarios

Scenario 1: Single Chamber Compromise

Trigger: Attestation failure, unexpected behavior, IOC match Impact: Single sample analysis lost Response: runbooks/incident-response-runbook.md → Contain → Eradicate → Reprovision

Scenario 2: Chamber Pool Node Failure

Trigger: Hardware failure, kernel panic, network partition Impact: Reduced capacity, in-flight detonations interrupted Response:

1. Drain node (cordon + evict pods)
2. Replace hardware / reprovision VM
3. Rejoin pool via scripts/provision-node.sh
4. Verify attestation before accepting workloads

Scenario 3: Control Plane Outage

Trigger: Kubernetes API server down, etcd corruption, network split Impact: No new detonations, existing chambers continue Response:

1. Activate backup control plane (cross-region)
2. Restore etcd from snapshot (< 1h old)
3. Verify chamber attestations still valid
4. Resume scheduling

Scenario 4: Evidence Store Corruption/Loss

Trigger: S3/MinIO corruption, ransomware, credential theft Impact: Loss of forensic artifacts, attestations, PCAPs Response:

1. Verify backup integrity (Glacier Vault Lock)
2. Restore from cross-region replica
3. Re-verify all attestation signatures
4. Rotate all storage credentials

Scenario 5: Full Site Loss (Region Down)

Trigger: Datacenter fire, flood, prolonged power loss Impact: Complete Alter unavailability Response: Failover to DR region (see procedures below)

Scenario 6: Supply Chain Compromise

Trigger: Malicious dependency, compromised base image, signing key theft Impact: All chambers potentially compromised Response:

1. Immediate fleet quarantine (network isolate)
2. Revoke compromised cosign keys
3. Rebuild all images from pinned digests
4. Full fleet reprovisioning
5. Rotate all secrets

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DR Region Architecture

Primary Region (us-east-1)          DR Region (us-west-2)
┌─────────────────────────┐         ┌─────────────────────────┐
│  Control Plane (3 AZs)  │  ────►  │  Warm Standby (1 AZ)    │
│  Chamber Pool (N nodes) │  Async  │  Chamber Pool (N/2 nodes)│
│  Evidence Store (S3)    │  Repl.  │  Evidence Store (S3 CRR)│
│  Vault (HA)             │  Sync   │  Vault (Perf. Standby)  │
│  Monitoring (Prom/GM)   │         │  Monitoring (Read-only) │
└─────────────────────────┘         └─────────────────────────┘

DR Region Pre-Staging

• Kubernetes cluster deployed (min 3 control plane, 2 worker)
• Chamber pool nodes pre-provisioned (scaled to 0)
• Cross-region replication (CRR) enabled on all S3 buckets
• Vault performance standby configured
• WireGuard mesh extended to DR region
• DNS failover configured (Route53 health checks)
• Quarterly DR drill scheduled

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Failover Procedures

Phase 1: Detection & Declaration (0–15 min)

# Automated: Alertmanager fires "AlterControlPlaneDown" or "AlterRegionUnreachable"
# Manual: Alter Keeper declares disaster via Slack #alter-dr

# Checklist:
# □ Confirm primary region unreachable (multi-source)
# □ Verify not transient network issue
# □ Notify stakeholders (Slack, PagerDuty, email)
# □ Start incident timer
# □ Assign DR Commander

Phase 2: DR Activation (15–60 min)

# 1. Promote DR Vault to primary
vault operator raft promote -dr-token=<token>

# 2. Scale DR chamber pool
kubectl --context=dr scale deployment chamber-pool --replicas=FULL_CAPACITY

# 3. Verify DR evidence store accessible
aws s3 ls s3://alter-evidence-dr --region us-west-2

# 4. Update DNS to DR endpoints
# Route53 failover: automatic via health checks
# Manual override if needed:
aws route53 change-resource-record-sets --hosted-zone-id=Z123 --change-batch file://dr-failover.json

# 5. Verify chamber attestation service
curl -sf https://attestation-dr.alter.syn-os/health

Phase 3: Validation (1–2 hours)

# 1. Test chamber provisioning
./scripts/provision-node.sh --chamber-type=static --verify-only --context=dr

# 2. Test sample detonation (benign sample)
./scripts/detonate.sh --sample=benign-<hash> --profile=smoke --context=dr

# 3. Verify attestation generation
./scripts/verify-attestation.sh --chamber-id=<test-id> --context=dr

# 4. Confirm evidence collection
./scripts/collect-evidence.sh --chamber-id=<test-id> --context=dr

# 5. Validate monitoring/alerting
# Check Prometheus targets up, Alertmanager routing

Phase 4: Operations Resumption (2–4 hours)

# 1. Announce DR operational
# Slack #alter-ops: "DR region active. Accepting detonation requests."

# 2. Redirect inbound API traffic
# API Gateway / Load Balancer already pointing to DR

# 3. Resume scheduled detonations
# Re-queue any interrupted jobs

# 4. Begin primary region recovery (parallel)
# See "Failback Procedures" below

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Failback Procedures

Prerequisites

• Primary region infrastructure healthy
• etcd restored and verified
• All chamber nodes reprovisioned and attested
• Evidence store synced (verify CRR caught up)
• DNS TTL expired / manual cutover planned

Failback Steps

# 1. Pause new detonations in DR
kubectl --context=dr scale deployment api-gateway --replicas=0

# 2. Drain DR chambers (wait for in-flight to complete)
kubectl --context=dr drain chamber-pool --ignore-daemonsets --delete-emptydir-data

# 3. Sync final evidence to primary
aws s3 sync s3://alter-evidence-dr s3://alter-evidence-primary --region us-west-2 --source-region us-east-1

# 4. Demote DR Vault
vault operator raft demote -dr-token=<token>

# 5. Promote primary Vault
vault operator raft promote

# 6. Scale primary chamber pool
kubectl --context=primary scale deployment chamber-pool --replicas=FULL_CAPACITY

# 7. Verify primary attestation service
curl -sf https://attestation.alter.syn-os/health

# 8. Cut DNS back to primary
aws route53 change-resource-record-sets --hosted-zone-id=Z123 --change-batch file://primary-failback.json

# 9. Scale down DR pool
kubectl --context=dr scale deployment chamber-pool --replicas=0

# 10. Declare failback complete
# Slack #alter-ops: "Failback complete. Primary region operational."

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Backup & Restore Procedures

Etcd Backup (Control Plane)

# Automated: Daily at 03:00 UTC via CronJob
# Manual:
ETCDCTL_API=3 etcdctl snapshot save /backup/etcd-$(date +%F).db \
  --endpoints=https://etcd-0:2379,https://etcd-1:2379,https://etcd-2:2379 \
  --cacert=/etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/ca.crt \
  --cert=/etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/server.crt \
  --key=/etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/server.key

# Verify:
ETCDCTL_API=3 etcdctl snapshot status /backup/etcd-$(date +%F).db

# Restore (on new cluster):
ETCDCTL_API=3 etcdctl snapshot restore /backup/etcd-<date>.db \
  --name=etcd-0 \
  --initial-cluster=etcd-0=https://10.0.0.1:2380,etcd-1=https://10.0.0.2:2380,etcd-2=https://10.0.0.3:2380 \
  --initial-cluster-token=alter-etcd \
  --initial-advertise-peer-urls=https://10.0.0.1:2380

Vault Backup

# Automated: Raft snapshots every 6 hours
# Manual:
vault operator raft snapshot save /backup/vault-$(date +%F).snap

# Restore:
vault operator raft snapshot restore /backup/vault-<date>.snap

Evidence Store

• Primary: S3 Standard + Cross-Region Replication (CRR) to DR
• Archive: S3 Glacier Deep Archive (WORM, Vault Lock) - 7 year retention
• Verification: Monthly integrity check via aws s3api head-object + checksum comparison

Chamber Images

• All images signed with cosign (keyless via Fulcio)
• Stored in GHCR + mirrored to ECR (primary) and ECR (DR)
• SBOMs generated and stored with each image

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Communication Plan

Audience	Channel	Frequency	Template
Alter Keepers	Slack #alter-dr + PagerDuty	Immediate, then 30 min	templates/dr-alert.md
Red Team Leads	Slack #red-team-ops + Email	15 min, then hourly	templates/dr-status.md
Management	Email + Phone (critical)	30 min, then 2 hours	templates/dr-exec-summary.md
Auditors/Compliance	Email (encrypted)	At declaration + resolution	templates/dr-compliance-notice.md

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DR Drill Schedule

Drill Type	Frequency	Scope	Success Criteria
Tabletop	Quarterly	All scenarios	Decision trees validated, contacts current
Partial Failover	Semi-annual	Control plane + 1 chamber	RTO < 2h, RPO < 30m
Full Failover	Annual	Complete region failover	RTO < 4h, RPO < 1h, all attestations valid
Failback	Annual	DR → Primary	Zero data loss, < 2h

Drill Record Template

# DR Drill Record - <DATE>

## Drill Type: [Tabletop | Partial | Full | Failback]
## Scenario: <Scenario ID from above>
## Participants: @alter-keeper, @infra-lead, @red-team-lead, ...

## Timeline
- T+0: Drill initiated
- T+X: Detection
- T+Y: DR activation started
- T+Z: DR operational
- T+W: Validation complete

## Results
- RTO Achieved: <time>
- RPO Achieved: <time>
- Attestations Valid: Y/N
- Evidence Integrity: Y/N
- Issues Found: [list]
- Action Items: [GitHub issues]

## Sign-off
- DR Commander: @<user> ✅
- Alter Keeper: @<user> ✅

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Runbook Integration

This DR plan integrates with:

Runbook	Integration Point
incident-response-runbook.md	Scenario 1, 6 response
node-provisioning-runbook.md	Phase 2, 3 chamber scaling
credential-rotation-runbook.md	Scenario 4, 6 secret rotation

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Version History

Version	Date	Author	Changes
1.0	2026-08-31	Syn_OS Research Division	Initial DR plan

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This plan is a living document. Update after every drill and incident.