Title: Hash-based Byzantine fault tolerant agreement with enhanced view consistency

Authors: Poonam Saini; Awadhesh Kumar Singh

Addresses: Department of CSE and IT, PEC University of Technology, Sector-12, Chandigarh-160012, India ' Department of Computer Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra-136119, India

Abstract: This paper presents an authentication-based Byzantine fault tolerant agreement protocol that is capable of detecting the tentative failures in transaction processing systems. The protocol employs a cryptographic hash function to detect crash as well as a few more types of commonly faced arbitrary behaviours manifested by the participating server replicas in the system. We show that the use of hash functions can successfully handle various types of (arbitrary) faults. In addition, it suggests a preemptive mechanism to proactively detect the malicious replicas. The protocol avoids frequent view changes that contributes to the liveness of the system and ensures continuity in transaction processing.

Keywords: Byzantine Agreement; cryptographic hash function; distributed transactions; proactive view change; fault tolerance; cryptography; tentative failures; transaction processing; malicious replicas; authentication.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCNDS.2014.059435

International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2014 Vol.12 No.2, pp.152 - 168

Accepted: 24 Mar 2013
Published online: 21 Jun 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article