A Security Framework for Distributed Ledgers

Graf M, Rausch D, Ronge V, Egger C, Küsters R, Schröder D (2021)

Publication Language: English

Publication Type: Conference contribution, Original article

Publication year: 2021

Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery

Series: Proceedings of the 2021 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

City/Town: New YorkNYUnited States

Pages Range: 1043--1064

Conference Proceedings Title: CCS '21

Event location: Virtual Event KR

ISBN: 978-1-4503-8454-4

DOI: 10.1145/3460120.3485362

Open Access Link: https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/145.pdf

Abstract

In the past few years blockchains have been a major focus for security research, resulting in significant progress in the design, formalization, and analysis of blockchain protocols. However, the more general class of distributed ledgers, which includes not just blockchains but also prominent non-blockchain protocols, such as Corda and OmniLedger, cannot be covered by the state-of-the-art in the security literature yet. These distributed ledgers often break with traditional blockchain paradigms, such as block structures to store data, system-wide consensus, or global consistency. In this paper, we close this gap by proposing the first framework for defining and analyzing the security of general distributed ledgers, with an ideal distributed ledger functionality, called Fledger, at the core of our contribution. This functionality covers not only classical blockchains but also non-blockchain distributed ledgers in a unified way. To illustrate Fledger, we first show that the prominent ideal block-chain functionalities Gledger and GPL realize (suitable instantiations of) Fledger, which captures their security properties. This implies that their respective implementations, including Bitcoin, Ouroboros Genesis, and Ouroboros Crypsinous, realize Fledger as well. Secondly, we demonstrate that Fledger is capable of precisely modeling also non-blockchain distributed ledgers by performing the first formal security analysis of such a distributed ledger, namely the prominent Corda protocol. Due to the wide spread use of Corda in industry, in particular the financial sector, this analysis is of independent interest. These results also illustrate that Fledger not just generalizes the modular treatment of blockchains to distributed ledgers, but moreover helps to unify existing results.

Authors with CRIS profile

Viktoria Ronge Lehrstuhl für Informatik 13 (Angewandte Kryptographie) Christoph Egger Lehrstuhl für Informatik 13 (Angewandte Kryptographie) Dominique Schröder Lehrstuhl für Informatik 13 (Angewandte Kryptographie)

Additional Organisation(s)

Graduiertenkolleg 2475 Cyberkriminalität und Forensische Informatik

Related research project(s)

Cyberkriminalität und forensische Informatik (Cybercrime) Oct. 1, 2019 - March 31, 2024

Involved external institutions

Universität Stuttgart DE Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

Graf, M., Rausch, D., Ronge, V., Egger, C., Küsters, R., & Schröder, D. (2021). A Security Framework for Distributed Ledgers. In Kim Y, Kim J, Vigna G, Shi E (Eds.), CCS '21 (pp. 1043--1064). Virtual Event, KR: New YorkNYUnited States: Association for Computing Machinery.

MLA:

Graf, Mike, et al. "A Security Framework for Distributed Ledgers." Proceedings of the ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Virtual Event Ed. Kim Y, Kim J, Vigna G, Shi E, New YorkNYUnited States: Association for Computing Machinery, 2021. 1043--1064.

BibTeX: Download