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Auditing Causal Relationships of Group Multicast Communications in Group-Oriented Distributed Systems

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Abstract

Auditability is a crucial aspect of distributed computing security. In a distributed computation environment, we may therefore want to prevent corrupt processes from denying or forging causal relationships between events. The audit of causal relationships of group multicast communications is an important component in achieving a solution to the problem of group-oriented distributed computing security. In this paper, a new approach to audit causal relationships of group multicast communications in group-oriented distributed systems is proposed. The goal of the auditing service is to collect, maintain, make available, and validate irrefutable evidence regarding causal relationships in group-oriented distributed systems. We affirm that the denial of existing causal relationships and the forgery of nonexistent causal relationships in group-oriented distributed systems can be correctly audited by our proposed approach. Also, auditing the causal delivery ordering for group multicast communications can actually be achieved. Moreover, we have validated the proposed auditing scheme to a moderately complex example. Experience indicates that the proposed scheme is indeed very useful.

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Tsaur, WJ., Horng, SJ. Auditing Causal Relationships of Group Multicast Communications in Group-Oriented Distributed Systems. The Journal of Supercomputing 18, 25–45 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008158907662

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