A novel algorithm for secure and reliable coordinator election in distributed networks

Abstract

Electing a reliable coordinator is a crucial task in peer-to-peer distributed network. The peer-to-peer distributed network comprises a number of peer entities. These member entities elect the coordinator entity by consensus [1][2][3]. Different consensus algorithms exist for electing an entity as a coordinator and those are generally termed as coordinator election algorithms. The majority of the existing election algorithms focus on improving the performance measures in particular communication cost [4][5][6]. As the entities in the system are networked and use message passing technique for communication and execution of distributed election algorithm, electing a reliable entity as a coordinator is a challenge. The unreliable communication channel used in message passing makes the election algorithm vulnerable to security attacks [7,8] The unauthorized access may result in a security and privacy attack which includes the impersonation and denial of voting attack [9,10].

A Robust, Preference-Based Coordinator Election Algorithm for Distributed Systems

“…Security vulnerabilities have been addressed in previous work, where a Secure and Reliable Coordinator Election Algorithm (SRCEA) was proposed for secure coordinator node election [24]. SRCEA utilizes a preference-based coordinator election method and standard cryptographic algorithms with a stateful initialization vector for encryption and decryption.…”

“…In our prior work, an algorithm was proposed to elect a reliable coordinator, considering nodal attributes in the election voting process [24]. The Secure Reliable Coordinator Election Algorithm (SRCEA) is designed with confidentiality and integrity features and can tolerate node crash failures for less than the majority of nodes.…”

“…FTCEA utilizes nodal attributes maintained by group view Gv including {P1, P2, P3, …, Pn} in the system to select candidates, as demonstrated by Algorithm 1, Candidate_Selection, presented below [32]. The selection criteria for candidate nodes are to have the minimum values for all these attributes.…”