1,236 research outputs found
Learning to generate Reliable Broadcast Algorithms
Modern distributed systems are supported by fault-tolerant algorithms, like
Reliable Broadcast and Consensus, that assure the correct operation of the
system even when some of the nodes of the system fail. However, the development
of distributed algorithms is a manual and complex process, resulting in
scientific papers that usually present a single algorithm or variations of
existing ones. To automate the process of developing such algorithms, this work
presents an intelligent agent that uses Reinforcement Learning to generate
correct and efficient fault-tolerant distributed algorithms. We show that our
approach is able to generate correct fault-tolerant Reliable Broadcast
algorithms with the same performance of others available in the literature, in
only 12,000 learning episodes
Keeping Authorities "Honest or Bust" with Decentralized Witness Cosigning
The secret keys of critical network authorities - such as time, name,
certificate, and software update services - represent high-value targets for
hackers, criminals, and spy agencies wishing to use these keys secretly to
compromise other hosts. To protect authorities and their clients proactively
from undetected exploits and misuse, we introduce CoSi, a scalable witness
cosigning protocol ensuring that every authoritative statement is validated and
publicly logged by a diverse group of witnesses before any client will accept
it. A statement S collectively signed by W witnesses assures clients that S has
been seen, and not immediately found erroneous, by those W observers. Even if S
is compromised in a fashion not readily detectable by the witnesses, CoSi still
guarantees S's exposure to public scrutiny, forcing secrecy-minded attackers to
risk that the compromise will soon be detected by one of the W witnesses.
Because clients can verify collective signatures efficiently without
communication, CoSi protects clients' privacy, and offers the first
transparency mechanism effective against persistent man-in-the-middle attackers
who control a victim's Internet access, the authority's secret key, and several
witnesses' secret keys. CoSi builds on existing cryptographic multisignature
methods, scaling them to support thousands of witnesses via signature
aggregation over efficient communication trees. A working prototype
demonstrates CoSi in the context of timestamping and logging authorities,
enabling groups of over 8,000 distributed witnesses to cosign authoritative
statements in under two seconds.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure
A Survey on Consortium Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms
Blockchain is a distributed ledger that is decentralized, immutable, and
transparent, which maintains a continuously growing list of transaction records
ordered into blocks. As the core of blockchain, the consensus algorithm is an
agreement to validate the correctness of blockchain transactions. For example,
Bitcoin is a public blockchain where each node in Bitcoin uses the Proof of
Work (PoW) algorithm to reach a consensus by competing to solve a puzzle.
Unlike a public blockchain, a consortium blockchain is an enterprise-level
blockchain that does not contend with the issues of creating a resource-saving
global consensus protocol. This paper highilights several state-of-the art
solutions in consensus algorithms for enterprise blockchain. For example, the
HyperLedger by Linux Foundation includes implementing Practical Byzantine Fault
Tolerance (PBFT) as the consensus algorithm. PBFT can tolerate a range of
malicious nodes and reach consensus with quadratic complexity. Another
consensus algorithm, HotStuff, implemented by Facebook Libra project, has
achieved linear complexity of the authenticator. This paper presents the
operational mechanisms of these and other consensus protocols, and analyzes and
compares their advantages and drawbacks.Comment: under submissio
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