Authenticated messages for a real-time fault-tolerant computer system

This thesis develops a message authentication scheme for a new version of the X-38 Fault-Tolerant Parallel Processor (FTPP), a high-performance real-time computer system designed for applications that need extreme reliability, such as control for human spaceflight. This computer system uses multiple replicated processors to ensure that the system as a whole continues to operate correctly even if some of the processors should fail. In order to maintain a synchronized state, the replicated processors must vote among themselves to make sure that they are using identical data. This thesis adds message authentication to the voting process. Using authenticated messages allows a system to achieve the same level of reliability with fewer replicas. This thesis analyzes where message authentication is needed in the voting process, then presents and evaluates several signature schemes for implementing message authentication. The X-38 FTPP uses radiation-hardened embedded processors, which have relatively limited computational power. Therefore, the challenge is to identify a scheme that is secure enough to guarantee that signatures cannot be forged, yet fast enough to sign messages at a high rate in real time.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Chau, David Chi-Shing

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Roger Racine and Barbara Liskov.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/36909

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/36909