Coordination Model for Improving Software System Attack-Tolerance and Survivability in Open Hostile Environments (Postprint).

摘要

This paper presents a coordination model that contains three active entities: actors, roles and coordinators. Actors abstract the system's functionalities while roles and coordinators statically encapsulate coordination constraints and dynamically propagate these constraints among themselves and onto the actors. A software system's attack-tolerance and survivability in open hostile environments are enhanced through appropriate constraint propagations and constraint enforcements. This setting implies that both the coordination constraints and coordination activities are decentralized and distributed among the coordinators and the roles. The decentralization not only shields the system from single point of failures, but also provides a foundation that survivable feedback loops can be built upon. The survivable feedback loops presented in the model resist the contamination of the system by faulty elements and thereby protect the whole system from being broken down by single failures.