A protocol for secure transactions
Douglas H. Steves, Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan, Mohamed G. Gouda · 1996
Secure transactions form the computational basis for electronic commerce. Many forms of commerce depend upon there being a defined and verifiable relationship between messages in a transaction. We have identified three such relational properties: causality, atomicity and isolation. Causality is a new property. It allows the receiver of a message to deduce and verify the sequence of messages sent and received by the sender prior to that message. In this paper, we present a secure transaction protocol that provides relational properties in addition to the normal properties of secure messages. 1 Introduction A transaction is a partial order of messages between two processes. Transactions proceed in three successive phases: initialization The transaction is accepted by both processes and all parameters are initialized. exchange One or more data messages are exchanged between the two processes. termination The transaction is concluded, either successfully or unsuccessfully. A message is...