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Documents authored by Enea, Constantin


Document
Faithful Simulation of Randomized BFT Protocols on Block DAGs

Authors: Hagit Attiya, Constantin Enea, and Shafik Nassar

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 279, 34th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2023)


Abstract
Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (BFT) protocols that are based on Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) are attractive due to their many advantages in asynchronous blockchain systems. These DAG-based protocols can be viewed as a simulation of some BFT protocol on a DAG. Many DAG-based BFT protocols rely on randomization, since they are used for agreement and ordering of transactions, which cannot be achieved deterministically in asynchronous systems. Randomization is achieved either through local sources of randomness, or by employing shared objects that provide a common source of randomness, e.g., common coins. A DAG simulation of a randomized protocol should be faithful, in the sense that it precisely preserves the properties of the original BFT protocol, and in particular, their probability distributions. We argue that faithfulness is ensured by a forward simulation. We show how to faithfully simulate any BFT protocol that uses public coins and shared objects, like common coins.

Cite as

Hagit Attiya, Constantin Enea, and Shafik Nassar. Faithful Simulation of Randomized BFT Protocols on Block DAGs. In 34th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 279, pp. 27:1-27:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)


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@InProceedings{attiya_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2023.27,
  author =	{Attiya, Hagit and Enea, Constantin and Nassar, Shafik},
  title =	{{Faithful Simulation of Randomized BFT Protocols on Block DAGs}},
  booktitle =	{34th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2023)},
  pages =	{27:1--27:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-299-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{279},
  editor =	{P\'{e}rez, Guillermo A. and Raskin, Jean-Fran\c{c}ois},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2023.27},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-190210},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2023.27},
  annote =	{Keywords: Byzantine failures, Hyperproperties, Forward Simulation}
}
Document
Formal Methods and Distributed Computing: Stronger Together (Dagstuhl Seminar 22492)

Authors: Hagit Attiya, Constantin Enea, Sergio Rajsbaum, and Ana Sokolova

Published in: Dagstuhl Reports, Volume 12, Issue 12 (2023)


Abstract
This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 22492 "Formal Methods and Distributed Computing: Stronger Together", held in December 2022.

Cite as

Hagit Attiya, Constantin Enea, Sergio Rajsbaum, and Ana Sokolova. Formal Methods and Distributed Computing: Stronger Together (Dagstuhl Seminar 22492). In Dagstuhl Reports, Volume 12, Issue 12, pp. 27-53, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)


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@Article{attiya_et_al:DagRep.12.12.27,
  author =	{Attiya, Hagit and Enea, Constantin and Rajsbaum, Sergio and Sokolova, Ana},
  title =	{{Formal Methods and Distributed Computing: Stronger Together (Dagstuhl Seminar 22492)}},
  pages =	{27--53},
  journal =	{Dagstuhl Reports},
  ISSN =	{2192-5283},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{12},
  number =	{12},
  editor =	{Attiya, Hagit and Enea, Constantin and Rajsbaum, Sergio and Sokolova, Ana},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DagRep.12.12.27},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-178452},
  doi =		{10.4230/DagRep.12.12.27},
  annote =	{Keywords: automated verification and reasoning, concurrent data structures and transactions, distributed algorithms, large-scale replication}
}
Document
Impossibility of Strongly-Linearizable Message-Passing Objects via Simulation by Single-Writer Registers

Authors: Hagit Attiya, Constantin Enea, and Jennifer L. Welch

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 209, 35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021)


Abstract
A key way to construct complex distributed systems is through modular composition of linearizable concurrent objects. A prominent example is shared registers, which have crash-tolerant implementations on top of message-passing systems, allowing the advantages of shared memory to carry over to message-passing. Yet linearizable registers do not always behave properly when used inside randomized programs. A strengthening of linearizability, called strong linearizability, has been shown to preserve probabilistic behavior, as well as other "hypersafety" properties. In order to exploit composition and abstraction in message-passing systems, it is crucial to know whether there exist strongly-linearizable implementations of registers in message-passing. This paper answers the question in the negative: there are no strongly-linearizable fault-tolerant message-passing implementations of multi-writer registers, max-registers, snapshots or counters. This result is proved by reduction from the corresponding result by Helmi et al. The reduction is a novel extension of the BG simulation that connects shared-memory and message-passing, supports long-lived objects, and preserves strong linearizability. The main technical challenge arises from the discrepancy between the potentially minuscule fraction of failures to be tolerated in the simulated message-passing algorithm and the large fraction of failures that can afflict the simulating shared-memory system. The reduction is general and can be viewed as the inverse of the ABD simulation of shared memory in message-passing.

Cite as

Hagit Attiya, Constantin Enea, and Jennifer L. Welch. Impossibility of Strongly-Linearizable Message-Passing Objects via Simulation by Single-Writer Registers. In 35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 209, pp. 7:1-7:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)


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@InProceedings{attiya_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2021.7,
  author =	{Attiya, Hagit and Enea, Constantin and Welch, Jennifer L.},
  title =	{{Impossibility of Strongly-Linearizable Message-Passing Objects via Simulation by Single-Writer Registers}},
  booktitle =	{35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021)},
  pages =	{7:1--7:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-210-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{209},
  editor =	{Gilbert, Seth},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-148096},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: Concurrent Objects, Message-passing systems, Strong linearizability, Impossibility proofs, BG simulation, Shared registers}
}
Document
Putting Strong Linearizability in Context: Preserving Hyperproperties in Programs That Use Concurrent Objects

Authors: Hagit Attiya and Constantin Enea

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 146, 33rd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2019)


Abstract
It has been observed that linearizability, the prevalent consistency condition for implementing concurrent objects, does not preserve some probability distributions. A stronger condition, called strong linearizability has been proposed, but its study has been somewhat ad-hoc. This paper investigates strong linearizability by casting it in the context of observational refinement of objects. We present a strengthening of observational refinement, which generalizes strong linearizability, obtaining several important implications. When a concrete concurrent object refines another, more abstract object - often sequential - the correctness of a program employing the concrete object can be verified by considering its behaviors when using the more abstract object. This means that trace properties of a program using the concrete object can be proved by considering the program with the abstract object. This, however, does not hold for hyperproperties, including many security properties and probability distributions of events. We define strong observational refinement, a strengthening of refinement that preserves hyperproperties, and prove that it is equivalent to the existence of forward simulations. We show that strong observational refinement generalizes strong linearizability. This implies that strong linearizability is also equivalent to forward simulation, and shows that strongly linearizable implementations can be composed both horizontally (i.e., locality) and vertically (i.e., with instantiation). For situations where strongly linearizable implementations do not exist (or are less efficient), we argue that reasoning about hyperproperties of programs can be simplified by strong observational refinement of non-atomic abstract objects.

Cite as

Hagit Attiya and Constantin Enea. Putting Strong Linearizability in Context: Preserving Hyperproperties in Programs That Use Concurrent Objects. In 33rd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 146, pp. 2:1-2:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)


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@InProceedings{attiya_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2019.2,
  author =	{Attiya, Hagit and Enea, Constantin},
  title =	{{Putting Strong Linearizability in Context: Preserving Hyperproperties in Programs That Use Concurrent Objects}},
  booktitle =	{33rd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2019)},
  pages =	{2:1--2:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-126-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{146},
  editor =	{Suomela, Jukka},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2019.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-113095},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2019.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: Concurrent Objects, Linearizability, Hyperproperties, Forward Simulations}
}
Document
Robustness Against Transactional Causal Consistency

Authors: Sidi Mohamed Beillahi, Ahmed Bouajjani, and Constantin Enea

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 140, 30th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2019)


Abstract
Distributed storage systems and databases are widely used by various types of applications. Transactional access to these storage systems is an important abstraction allowing application programmers to consider blocks of actions (i.e., transactions) as executing atomically. For performance reasons, the consistency models implemented by modern databases are weaker than the standard serializability model, which corresponds to the atomicity abstraction of transactions executing over a sequentially consistent memory. Causal consistency for instance is one such model that is widely used in practice. In this paper, we investigate application-specific relationships between several variations of causal consistency and we address the issue of verifying automatically if a given transactional program is robust against causal consistency, i.e., all its behaviors when executed over an arbitrary causally consistent database are serializable. We show that programs without write-write races have the same set of behaviors under all these variations, and we show that checking robustness is polynomial time reducible to a state reachability problem in transactional programs over a sequentially consistent shared memory. A surprising corollary of the latter result is that causal consistency variations which admit incomparable sets of behaviors admit comparable sets of robust programs. This reduction also opens the door to leveraging existing methods and tools for the verification of concurrent programs (assuming sequential consistency) for reasoning about programs running over causally consistent databases. Furthermore, it allows to establish that the problem of checking robustness is decidable when the programs executed at different sites are finite-state.

Cite as

Sidi Mohamed Beillahi, Ahmed Bouajjani, and Constantin Enea. Robustness Against Transactional Causal Consistency. In 30th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 140, pp. 30:1-30:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)


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@InProceedings{beillahi_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2019.30,
  author =	{Beillahi, Sidi Mohamed and Bouajjani, Ahmed and Enea, Constantin},
  title =	{{Robustness Against Transactional Causal Consistency}},
  booktitle =	{30th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2019)},
  pages =	{30:1--30:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-121-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{140},
  editor =	{Fokkink, Wan and van Glabbeek, Rob},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2019.30},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-109321},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2019.30},
  annote =	{Keywords: Distributed Databases, Causal Consistency, Model Checking}
}
Document
Order out of Chaos: Proving Linearizability Using Local Views

Authors: Yotam M. Y. Feldman, Constantin Enea, Adam Morrison, Noam Rinetzky, and Sharon Shoham

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 121, 32nd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2018)


Abstract
Proving the linearizability of highly concurrent data structures, such as those using optimistic concurrency control, is a challenging task. The main difficulty is in reasoning about the view of the memory obtained by the threads, because as they execute, threads observe different fragments of memory from different points in time. Until today, every linearizability proof has tackled this challenge from scratch. We present a unifying proof argument for the correctness of unsynchronized traversals, and apply it to prove the linearizability of several highly concurrent search data structures, including an optimistic self-balancing binary search tree, the Lazy List and a lock-free skip list. Our framework harnesses sequential reasoning about the view of a thread, considering the thread as if it traverses the data structure without interference from other operations. Our key contribution is showing that properties of reachability along search paths can be deduced for concurrent traversals from such interference-free traversals, when certain intuitive conditions are met. Basing the correctness of traversals on such local view arguments greatly simplifies linearizability proofs. At the heart of our result lies a notion of order on the memory, corresponding to the order in which locations in memory are read by the threads, which guarantees a certain notion of consistency between the view of the thread and the actual memory. To apply our framework, the user proves that the data structure satisfies two conditions: (1) acyclicity of the order on memory, even when it is considered across intermediate memory states, and (2) preservation of search paths to locations modified by interfering writes. Establishing the conditions, as well as the full linearizability proof utilizing our proof argument, reduces to simple concurrent reasoning. The result is a clear and comprehensible correctness proof, and elucidates common patterns underlying several existing data structures.

Cite as

Yotam M. Y. Feldman, Constantin Enea, Adam Morrison, Noam Rinetzky, and Sharon Shoham. Order out of Chaos: Proving Linearizability Using Local Views. In 32nd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2018). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 121, pp. 23:1-23:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2018)


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@InProceedings{feldman_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2018.23,
  author =	{Feldman, Yotam M. Y. and Enea, Constantin and Morrison, Adam and Rinetzky, Noam and Shoham, Sharon},
  title =	{{Order out of Chaos: Proving Linearizability Using Local Views}},
  booktitle =	{32nd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2018)},
  pages =	{23:1--23:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-092-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2018},
  volume =	{121},
  editor =	{Schmid, Ulrich and Widder, Josef},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2018.23},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-98124},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2018.23},
  annote =	{Keywords: concurrency and synchronization, concurrent data structures, lineariazability, optimistic concurrency control, verification and formal methods}
}
Document
Checking Linearizability of Concurrent Priority Queues

Authors: Ahmed Bouajjani, Constantin Enea, and Chao Wang

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 85, 28th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2017)


Abstract
Efficient implementations of concurrent objects such as atomic collections are essential to modern computing. Unfortunately their correctness criteria — linearizability with respect to given ADT specifications — are hard to verify. Verifying linearizability is undecidable in general, even on classes of implementations where the usual control-state reachability is decidable. In this work we consider concurrent priority queues which are fundamental to many multi-threaded applications like task scheduling or discrete event simulation, and show that verifying linearizability of such implementations is reducible to control-state reachability. This reduction entails the first decidability results for verifying concurrent priority queues with an unbounded number of threads, and it enables the application of existing safety-verification tools for establishing their correctness.

Cite as

Ahmed Bouajjani, Constantin Enea, and Chao Wang. Checking Linearizability of Concurrent Priority Queues. In 28th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 85, pp. 16:1-16:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)


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@InProceedings{bouajjani_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2017.16,
  author =	{Bouajjani, Ahmed and Enea, Constantin and Wang, Chao},
  title =	{{Checking Linearizability of Concurrent Priority Queues}},
  booktitle =	{28th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2017)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-048-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2017},
  volume =	{85},
  editor =	{Meyer, Roland and Nestmann, Uwe},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2017.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-78079},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2017.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: Concurrency, Linearizability, Model Checking}
}
Document
Invited Talk
Checking Correctness of Concurrent Objects: Tractable Reductions to Reachability (Invited Talk)

Authors: Ahmed Bouajjani, Michael Emmi, Constantin Enea, and Jad Hamza

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 45, 35th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2015)


Abstract
Efficient implementations of concurrent objects such as semaphores, locks, and atomic collections including stacks and queues are vital to modern computer systems. Programming them is however error prone. To minimize synchronization overhead between concurrent object-method invocations, implementors avoid blocking operations like lock acquisition, allowing methods to execute concurrently. However, concurrency risks unintended inter-operation interference. Their correctness is captured by observational refinement which ensures conformance to atomic reference implementations. Formally, given two libraries L_1 and L_2 implementing the methods of some concurrent object, we say L_1 refines L_2 if and only if every computation of every program using L_1 would also be possible were L_2 used instead. Linearizability, being an equivalent property, is the predominant proof technique for establishing observational refinement: one shows that each concurrent execution has a linearization which is a valid sequential execution according to a specification, given by an abstract data type or atomic reference implementation. However, checking linearizability is intrinsically hard. Indeed, even in the case where method implementations are finite-state and object specifications are also finite-state, and when a fixed number of threads (invoking methods in parallel) is considered, the linearizability problem is EXPSPACE-complete, and it becomes undecidable when the number of threads is unbounded. These results show in particular that there is a complexity/decidability gap between the problem of checking linearizability and the problem of checking reachability (i.e., the dual of checking safety/invariance properties), the latter being, PSPACE-complete and EXPSPACE-complete in the above considered cases, respectively. We address here the issue of investigating cases where tractable reductions of the observational refinement/linearizability problem to the reachability problem, or dually to invariant checking, are possible. Our aim is (1) to develop algorithmic approaches that avoid a systematic exploration of all possible linearizations of all computations, (2) to exploit existing techniques and tools for efficient invariant checking to check observational refinement, and (3) to establish decidability and complexity results for significant classes of concurrent objects and data structures. We present two approaches that we have proposed recently. The first approach introduces a parameterized approximation schema for detecting observational refinement violations. This approach exploits a fundamental property of shared-memory library executions: their histories are interval orders, a special case of partial orders which admit canonical representations in which each operation o is mapped to a positive-integer-bounded interval I(o). Interval orders are equipped with a natural notion of length, which corresponds to the smallest integer constant for which an interval mapping exists. Then, we define a notion of bounded-interval-length analysis, and demonstrate its efficiency, in terms of complexity, coverage, and scalability, for detecting observational refinement bugs. The second approach focuses on a specific class of abstract data types, including common concurrent objects and data structures such as stacks and queues. We show that for this class of objects, the linearizability problem is actually as hard as the control-state reachability problem. Indeed, we prove that in this case, the existence of linearizability violations (i.e., finite computations that are not linearizable), can be captured completely by a finite number of finite-state automata, even when an unbounded number of parallel operations is allowed (assuming that libraries are data-independent).

Cite as

Ahmed Bouajjani, Michael Emmi, Constantin Enea, and Jad Hamza. Checking Correctness of Concurrent Objects: Tractable Reductions to Reachability (Invited Talk). In 35th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2015). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 45, pp. 2-4, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2015)


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@InProceedings{bouajjani_et_al:LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2015.2,
  author =	{Bouajjani, Ahmed and Emmi, Michael and Enea, Constantin and Hamza, Jad},
  title =	{{Checking Correctness of Concurrent Objects: Tractable Reductions to Reachability}},
  booktitle =	{35th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2015)},
  pages =	{2--4},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-939897-97-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2015},
  volume =	{45},
  editor =	{Harsha, Prahladh and Ramalingam, G.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2015.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-56638},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2015.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: Concurrent objects, linearizability, verification, bug detection}
}
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