A theory of integrating tamper evidence with stabilization

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

11-12-2015

Department

Department of Computer Science

Abstract

We propose the notion of tamper-evident stabilization -that combines stabilization with the concept of tamper evidence- for computing systems. On the first glance, these notions are contradictory; stabilization requires that eventually the system functionality is fully restored whereas tamper evidence requires that the system functionality is permanently degraded in the event of tampering. Tamper-evident stabilization captures the intuition that the system will tolerate perturbation upto a limit. In the event that it is perturbed beyond that limit, it will exhibit permanent evidence of tampering, where it may provide reduced (possibly none) functionality. We compare tamper-evident stabilization with (conventional) stabilization and with active stabilization and propose an approach to verify tamper-evident stabilizing programs in polynomial time. We demonstrate tamper-evident stabilization with two examples and argue how approaches for designing stabilization can be used to design tamper-evident stabilization. We also study issues of composition in tamper-evident stabilization. Finally, we point out how tamper-evident stabilization can effectively be used to provide tradeoff between fault-prevention and fault tolerance.

Publication Title

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)

ISBN

978-3-319-24643-7

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