Impossibility of finding any third family of server protocols integrating Byzantine quorum systems with threshold signature schemes

Jingqiang Lin, Peng Liu, Jiwu Jing, Qiongxiao Wang

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

In order to tolerate servers' Byzantine failures, a distributed storage service of self-verifying data (e.g., certificates) needs to make three security properties be Byzantine fault tolerant (BFT): data consistency, data availability, and confidentiality of the (signing service's) private key. Building such systems demands the integration of Byzantine quorum systems (BQS), which only make data consistency and availability be BFT, and threshold signature schemes (TSS), which only make confidentiality of the private key be BFT. Two families of correct or valid TSS-BQS systems (of which the server protocols carry all the design options) have been proposed in the literature. Motivated by the failures in finding a third family of valid server protocols, we study the reverse problem and formally prove that it is impossible to find any third family of valid TSS-BQS systems. To obtain this proof, we develop a validity theory on server protocols of TSS-BQS systems. It is shown that the only two families of valid server protocols, "predicted" (or deduced) by the validity theory, precisely match the existing protocols.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationSecurity and Privacy in Communication Networks - 6th Iternational ICST Conference, SecureComm 2010, Proceedings
Pages307-325
Number of pages19
DOIs
StatePublished - 2010
Event6th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2010 - Singapore, Singapore
Duration: Sep 7 2010Sep 9 2010

Publication series

NameLecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering
Volume50 LNICST
ISSN (Print)1867-8211

Other

Other6th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2010
Country/TerritorySingapore
CitySingapore
Period9/7/109/9/10

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications

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