Architectural issues in fault-tolerant, secure computing systems

Thesis/Dissertation · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1988

OSTI ID:5702936

Joseph, M K

This dissertation explores several facets of the applicability of fault-tolerance techniques to secure computer design, these being: (1) how fault-tolerance techniques can be used on unsolved problems in computer security (e.g., computer viruses, and denial-of-service); (2) how fault-tolerance techniques can be used to support classical computer-security mechanisms in the presence of accidental and deliberate faults; and (3) the problems involved in designing a fault-tolerant, secure computer system (e.g., how computer security can degrade along with both the computational and fault-tolerance capabilities of a computer system). The approach taken in this research is almost as important as its results. It is different from current computer-security research in that a design paradigm for fault-tolerant computer design is used. This led to an extensive fault and error classification of many typical security threats. Throughout this work, a fault-tolerance perspective is taken. However, the author did not ignore basic computer-security technology. For some problems he investigated how to support and extend basic-security mechanism (e.g., trusted computing base), instead of trying to achieve the same result with purely fault-tolerance techniques.

• Research Organization: California Univ., Los Angeles, CA (USA)
• OSTI ID: 5702936
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990210* -- Supercomputers-- (1987-1989)
CLASSIFICATION
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE
COMPUTERS
DESIGN
DIGITAL COMPUTERS
ERRORS
FAULT TOLERANT COMPUTERS
FAULT TREE ANALYSIS
SECURITY
SYSTEM FAILURE ANALYSIS
SYSTEMS ANALYSIS