The role of accountability in dependable distributed systems
Aydan R. Yumerefendi, Jeffrey S. Chase · 2005
This paper promotes accountability as a rst-class de-sign principle for dependable network systems. Conven-tional techniques for dependable systems design are insuf-cient to defend against an adversary that manipulates the system covertly in order to lie, cheat, or steal. This paper treats subversion as a form of fault, and suggests that de-signing accountability into the system provides the means to detect, isolate, and tolerate such faults, and even to pre-vent them by removing incentives for malicious behavior. A key challenge for the future is to extend the repertoire of de-pendable systems design and analysis with broadly appli-cable techniques to build systems with target levels of ac-countability quantied by the probability that an attacker will be exposed. 1.