Byzantine-Tolerant Set-Constrained Delivery Broadcast

Set-Constrained Delivery Broadcast (SCD-broadcast), recently introduced at ICDCN 2018, is a high-level communication abstraction that captures ordering properties not between individual messages but between sets of messages. More precisely, it allows processes to broadcast messages and deliver sets of messages, under the constraint that if a process delivers a set containing a message m before a set containing a message m\u27, then no other process delivers first a set containing m\u27 and later a set containing m. It has been shown that SCD-broadcast and read/write registers are computationally equivalent, and an algorithm implementing SCD-broadcast is known in the context of asynchronous message passing systems prone to crash failures. This paper introduces a Byzantine-tolerant SCD-broadcast algorithm, which we call BSCD-broadcast. Our proposed algorithm assumes an underlying basic Byzantine-tolerant reliable broadcast abstraction. We first introduce an intermediary communication primitive, Byzantine FIFO broadcast (BFIFO-broadcast), which we then use as a primitive in our final BSCD-broadcast algorithm. Unlike the original SCD-broadcast algorithm that is tolerant to up to t<n/2 crashing processes, and unlike the underlying Byzantine reliable broadcast primitive that is tolerant to up to t<n/3 Byzantine processes, our BSCD-broadcast algorithm is tolerant to up to t<n/4 Byzantine processes. As an illustration of the high abstraction power provided by the BSCD-broadcast primitive, we show that it can be used to implement a Byzantine-tolerant read/write snapshot object in an extremely simple way

A Modular Approach to Construct Signature-Free BRB Algorithms under a Message Adversary

International audienceThis paper explores how reliable broadcast can be implemented without signatures when facing a dual adversary that can both corrupt processes and remove messages. More precisely, we consider an asynchronous n-process message-passing system in which up to t processes are Byzantine and where, at the network level, for each message broadcast by a correct process, an adversary can prevent up to d processes from receiving it (the integer d defines the power of the message adversary). So, unlike previous works, this work considers that not only can computing entities be faulty (Byzantine processes), but, in addition, that the network can also lose messages. To this end, the paper adopts a modular strategy and first introduces a new basic communication abstraction denoted k2-cast, which simplifies quorum engineering, and studies its properties in this new adversarial context. Then, the paper deconstructs existing signature-free Byzantine-tolerant asynchronous broadcast algorithms and, with the help of the k2-cast communication abstraction, reconstructs versions of them that tolerate both Byzantine processes and message adversaries. Interestingly, these reconstructed algorithms are also more efficient than the Byzantine-tolerant-only algorithms from which they originate

Byzantine-Tolerant Set-Constrained Delivery Broadcast

International audienc