article

The SecureRing group communication system

Authors:

Kim Potter Kihlstrom,

L. E. Moser,

P. M. Melliar-SmithAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC), Volume 4, Issue 4

Pages 371 - 406

https://doi.org/10.1145/503339.503341

Published: 01 November 2001 Publication History

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Abstract

Secure reliable group communication protocols can facilitate the development of survivable distributed systems that are able to remain correct and reliable despite intrusions that cause some nodes to behave in an arbitrary or malicious manner. However, the development of such protocols is itself difficult, and prior systems have exhibited high overheads, primarily due to the cost of digital signatures. The SecureRing group communication system provides secure, reliable, totally-ordered message delivery and group membership services despite the malicious corruption of a constant fraction of the processors within the system. The network is assumed not to partition, and persistent communication faults are handled as processor faults. The SecureRing message delivery protocol makes use of message digests in a signed token to allow a single digital signature to cover multiple messages, and to avoid the need for multiple rounds of message exchange in normal operation. While these techniques mean that messages are not authenticated in real time, they enable the SecureRing protocols to achieve high throughput and reasonable latency.

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Reviews

Reviewer: Eliezer Dekel

The SecureRing group communication system, developed by the authors at the University of California Santa Barbara, is described in this paper. SecureRing can facilitate the development of survivable distributed systems by providing secure, reliable, totally ordered message delivery and group membership services despite corruption of up to ?( n -1)/3? in n processors. The message delivery protocol of the SecureRing utilizes message digests in a signed token. The message ordering protocol uses a logical ring as the underlying mechanism on which the message ordering protocol operates. It assumes a network without partitions where persistent communication faults are handled as processor faults. SecureRing protocols assume synchrony for correctness and utilize state machine replication. The paper is well organized. After a brief motivation for the work, the authors discuss the model of the distributed system and provide an overview of the SecureRing system organization. They discuss data structures and protocols for each of the main system components: the message delivery component, the membership component, and the Byzantine fault detector. They conclude their account of the SecureRing group communication system with an example scenario and performance results. The paper is well written and describes the authors’ elegant solution and its performance well. SecureRing is local area network-based. Given the performance issues associated with the use of digital signatures and the fact that most of the time, local area networks reside behind firewalls, it is not clear that there is any particular need for this system. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Published In

ACM Transactions on Information and System Security Volume 4, Issue 4

November 2001

162 pages

ISSN:1094-9224

EISSN:1557-7406

DOI:10.1145/503339

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 November 2001

Published in TISSEC Volume 4, Issue 4

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