Byzantine Failure and Resilience
Failures in an algorithm or protocol can be categorized into three main types:
- A failure to take another execution step in the algorithm: This is usually referred to as a "fail stop" fault.
- A random failure to execute correctly: This is called a "random fault" or "random Byzantine" fault.
- An arbitrary failure where the algorithm fails to execute the steps correctly (usually in a clever way by some adversary to make the whole algorithm fail) which also encompasses the previous two types of faults; this is called a "Byzantine fault".
A Byzantine resilient or Byzantine fault tolerant protocol or algorithm is an algorithm that is robust to all the kinds of failures mentioned above. For example, given a space shuttle with multiple redundant processors and some of the processors give incorrect data, which processors or sets of processors should be believed? The solution can be formulated as a Byzantine fault tolerant protocol.
Read more about this topic: Quantum Byzantine Agreement
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