TY - GEN
T1 - Impossibility of finding any third family of server protocols integrating Byzantine quorum systems with threshold signature schemes
AU - Lin, Jingqiang
AU - Liu, Peng
AU - Jing, Jiwu
AU - Wang, Qiongxiao
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
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U2 - 10.1007/978-3-642-16161-2_18
DO - 10.1007/978-3-642-16161-2_18
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84885889699
SN - 364216160X
SN - 9783642161605
T3 - Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering
SP - 307
EP - 325
BT - Security and Privacy in Communication Networks - 6th Iternational ICST Conference, SecureComm 2010, Proceedings
T2 - 6th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2010
Y2 - 7 September 2010 through 9 September 2010
ER -