Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.

Lecture Notes in Informatics


INFORMATIK 2003 - Mit Sicherheit Informatik, Schwerpunkt "Sicherheit - Schutz und Zuverlässigkeit", 29. September - 2. Oktober 2003 in Frankfurt am Main. P-36, 127-138 (2003).

GI, Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn
2003


Editors

Rüdiger Grimm (ed.), Hubert B. Keller (ed.), Kai Rannenberg (ed.)


Copyright © GI, Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn

Contents

Byzantine failures and security: arbitrary is not (always) random

Felix C. Gärtner

Abstract


The Byzantine failure model allows arbitrary behavior of a certain fractionof network nodes in a distributed system. It was introduced to model and analyze the effects of very severe hardware faults in aircraft control systems. Lately, the Byzantine failure model has been used in the area of network security where Byzantine-tolerance is equated with resilience against malicious attackers. We discuss two reasons why one should be careful in doing so. Firstly, Byzantinetolerance is not concerned with secrecy and so special means have to be employed if secrecy is a desired system property. Secondly, in contrast to the domain of hardware faults, in a security setting it is difficult to compute the assumption coverage of the Byzantine failure model, i.e., the probability that the failure assumption holds in practice. To address this latter point we develop a methodology which allows to estimate the reliability of a Byzantine-tolerant solution exposed to attackers of different strengths.


Full Text: PDF

GI, Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn
ISBN 3-88579-330-X


Last changed 04.10.2013 17:59:44