Impossibility of finding any third family of server protocols integrating Byzantine quorum systems with threshold signature schemes†. Issue 5 (13th November 2012)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lin, Jingqiang; Liu, Peng; Jing, Jiwu; Wang, Qiongxiao
• Is Part Of: Security and communication networks. Volume 6:Issue 5(2013:May)
• Page Start: 612
• Page End: 630
• Publication Date: 2012-11-13
• Subjects: Byzantine fault tolerance -- Byzantine quorum system -- threshold signature scheme; Computer networks -- Security measures -- Periodicals; Computer security -- Periodicals; Cryptography -- Periodicals; 005.805
• DOI: 10.1002/sec.593
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1939-0114

Abstract

ABSTRACT: To tolerate servers' Byzantine failures, a distributed storage service of self‐verifying data 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 (BQSs), which only make data consistency and availability be BFT, and threshold signature schemes (TSSs), which only make confidentiality of the private key be BFT. Two families of 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. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Abstract : To provide self‐contained Byzantine fault tolerant storage services of self‐verifying data, two server protocols integrating of Byzantine quorum systems (BQSs) and threshold signature schemes (TSSs) are proposed in the literature. Motivated by failures in finding a third 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. Two families of server protocols deduced from this theory, match the existing ones.