Security and Fault-tolerance in Distributed Systems

Course at ETH Zurich, Department of Computer Science , Spring Semester 2008

Description

According to Lamport, a distributed system is one where the crash of a computer that you've never heard of stops you from getting any work done. This course presents methods for building dependable and secure distributed systems. The emphasis is on fault-tolerant and distributed cryptographic protocols. Topics include group communication, failure detectors, reliable broadcast protocols, distributed cryptography, threshold cryptosystems, Byzantine agreement, quorum systems, and replication. Applications to cluster computing, Internet services, and storage systems will be presented.

The course presents principles and fundamental methods, and shows how they are applied to real-world systems.

Organization

Lecturer. Dr. Christian Cachin, IBM Zurich Research Lab.
Teaching Assistant. Dr. Davide Bilò, Institute of Theoretical Computer Science.

Dates.

Lecture: Thursday, 14:15-16:00, IFW D42, starting 21. Feb. 2008.

Exercise: Thursday, 16:15-17:00, IFW D42, starting 21. Feb. 2008.

Web page. http://www.zurich.ibm.com/~cca/sft08/,

The course is part of the Information Security Master Track.

Prerequisites. Knowledge in information security and/or network security, distributed systems, and cryptography.

List of Topics

Introduction
Dependability Concepts
Quorums
Registers and Shared Memory
Consensus and Broadcast
View-synchronous Group Communication
Distributed Cryptography
Byzantine Agreement
Service Replication
Data Storage

Schedule

Date	Lecture notes	Assigned exercise / reading
21. Feb.	Introduction & Dependability	Exercise 1
28. Feb.	-- no lecture --
6. Mar.	Quorums	Exercise 2 (due: 13. Mar.)
13. Mar.	Registers and Shared Memory	Exercise 3 (due: 20. Mar.)
20. Mar.	Consensus and Reliable Broadcasts	Exercise 4 (due: 3. Apr.)
27. Mar.	-- no lecture / Easter vacaction --
3. Apr.	Consensus and Reliable Broadcasts (cont.)	Exercise 5 (due: 10. Apr.)
10. Apr.	Consensus and Reliable Broadcasts (cont.)	Exercise 6 (due: 17. Apr.)
17. Apr.	View-synchronous group communication	--
24. Apr.	Distributed cryptography	Exercise 7 (due: 8. May)
1. May	-- no lecture / more vacaction --
8. May	Agreement and Broadcasts with Byzantine Faults	Exercise 8 (due: 15. May)