General Framework for Linear Secure Distributed Matrix Multiplication with Byzantine Servers

TL;DR

This paper introduces a unified linear framework for secure distributed matrix multiplication that effectively handles stragglers and Byzantine servers, providing bounds, error correction strategies, and unifying previous schemes.

Contribution

It presents a general, unifying framework for SDMM that simplifies security proofs, derives bounds, and incorporates error correction with interleaved codes.

Findings

Bounds on recovery threshold and collusion tolerance

Error correction capabilities with interleaved codes

Unification of existing SDMM schemes

Abstract

In this paper, a general framework for linear secure distributed matrix multiplication (SDMM) is introduced. The model allows for a neat treatment of straggling and Byzantine servers via a star product interpretation as well as simplified security proofs. Known properties of star products also immediately yield a lower bound for the recovery threshold as well as an upper bound for the number of colluding workers the system can tolerate. Another bound on the recovery threshold is given by the decodability condition, which generalizes a bound for GASP codes. The framework produces many of the known SDMM schemes as special cases, thereby providing unification for the previous literature on the topic. Furthermore, error behavior specific to SDMM is discussed and interleaved codes are proposed as a suitable means for efficient error correction in the proposed model. Analysis of the error correction capability under natural assumptions about the error distribution is also provided, largely based on well-known results on interleaved codes. Error detection and other error distributions are also discussed.