Preserving Performance of Byzantine Fault Tolerant Replica Groups in the Presence of Malicious Clients

Authors

Sajeeva L. Pallemulle, Washington University in St Louis
Haraldur D. Thorvaldsson, Washington University in St Louis
Kenneth J. Goldman, Washington University in St Louis

Document Type

Technical Report

Department

Computer Science and Engineering

Publication Date

2006-01-01

Filename

wucse-2006-52.pdf

Technical Report Number

WUCSE-2006-52

Abstract

The Castro and Liskov Byzantine Fault Tolerance protocol for replicated state machines (CLBFT) provides a practical means of tolerating arbitrary replica failures in replicated passive data servers. For better performance, CLBFT uses Message Authentication Codes (MAC) instead of public Key cryptography to authenticate messages and preserves replica consistency even in the presence of malicious clients. However, CLBFT is susceptible to potential attacks by malicious clients using corrupted MACs to force replica groups into expensive configuration changes repeatedly. While not affecting correctness, this vulnerability can seriously impair the performance of the replica group. We propose modifications to CLBFT that address this problem. We identify two key forms of attacks and present a viable solution to each.

Comments

Permanent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7936/K7G73BXC

Recommended Citation

Pallemulle, Sajeeva L.; Thorvaldsson, Haraldur D.; and Goldman, Kenneth J., "Preserving Performance of Byzantine Fault Tolerant Replica Groups in the Presence of Malicious Clients" Report Number: WUCSE-2006-52 (2006). All Computer Science and Engineering Research.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cse_research/203