Automatic Integration of BFT State-Machine Replication into IoT Systems

TL;DR

This paper presents an automated approach to integrating Byzantine fault-tolerant state-machine replication into IoT systems, focusing on simplifying developer effort and adapting to event-driven, loosely-coupled IoT architectures.

Contribution

It introduces a method for automated configuration, re-wiring, and deployment of BFT SMR in component-based IoT environments, decoupling application design from replication complexity.

Findings

Automated integration streamlines BFT deployment in IoT systems.

Decoupling application architecture from replication simplifies development.

Enhanced fault tolerance in IoT through automated BFT SMR deployment.

Abstract

Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) can preserve the availability and integrity of IoT systems where single components may suffer from random data corruption or attacks that can expose them to malicious behavior. While state-of-the-art BFT state-machine replication (SMR) libraries are often tailored to fit a standard request-response interaction model with dedicated client-server roles, in our design, we employ an IoT-fit interaction model that assumes a loosly-coupled, event-driven interaction between arbitrarily wired IoT components. In this paper, we explore the possibility of automating and streamlining the complete process of integrating BFT SMR into a component-based IoT execution environment. Our main goal is providing simplicity for the developer: We strive to decouple the specification of a logical application architecture from the difficulty of incorporating BFT replication mechanisms into it. Thus, our contributions address the automated configuration, re-wiring and deployment of IoT components, and their replicas, within a component-based, event-driven IoT platform.