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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.8

Auditable Shared Objects: From Registers to Synchronization Primitives

Authors: Hagit Attiya, Antonio Fernández Anta, Alessia Milani, Alexandre Rapetti, and Corentin Travers

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 356, 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)

Abstract

Auditability allows to track operations performed on a shared object, recording who accessed which information. This gives data owners more control on their data. Initially studied in the context of single-writer registers, this work extends the notion of auditability to other shared objects, and studies their properties. We start by moving from single-writer to multi-writer registers, and provide an implementation of an auditable n-writer m-reader read / write register, with O(n+m) step complexity. This implementation uses (m+n)-sliding registers, which have consensus number m+n. We show that this consensus number is necessary. The implementation extends naturally to support an auditable load-linked / store-conditional (LL/SC) shared object. LL/SC is a primitive that supports efficient implementation of many shared objects. Finally, we relate auditable registers to other access control objects, by implementing an anti-flickering deny list from auditable registers.

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Hagit Attiya, Antonio Fernández Anta, Alessia Milani, Alexandre Rapetti, and Corentin Travers. Auditable Shared Objects: From Registers to Synchronization Primitives. In 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 356, pp. 8:1-8:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{attiya_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2025.8,
  author =	{Attiya, Hagit and Anta, Antonio Fern\'{a}ndez and Milani, Alessia and Rapetti, Alexandre and Travers, Corentin},
  title =	{{Auditable Shared Objects: From Registers to Synchronization Primitives}},
  booktitle =	{39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)},
  pages =	{8:1--8:22},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-402-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{356},
  editor =	{Kowalski, Dariusz R.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.8},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-248253},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.8},
  annote =	{Keywords: Auditability, Wait-free implementation, Synchronization power, Distributed objects, Shared memory, LL/SC, Deny List}
}

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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2023.4

The Synchronization Power of Auditable Registers

Authors: Hagit Attiya, Antonella Del Pozzo, Alessia Milani, Ulysse Pavloff, and Alexandre Rapetti

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 286, 27th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2023)

Abstract

Auditability allows to track all the read operations performed on a register. It abstracts the need of data owners to control access to their data, tracking who read which information. This work considers possible formalizations of auditing and their ramification for the possibility of providing it. The natural definition is to require a linearization of all write, read and audit operations together (atomic auditing). The paper shows that atomic auditing is a powerful tool, as it can be used to solve consensus. The number of processes that can solve consensus using atomic audit depends on the number of processes that can read or audit the register. If there is a single reader or a single auditor (the writer), then consensus can be solved among two processes. If multiple readers and auditors are possible, then consensus can be solved among the same number of processes. This means that strong synchronization primitives are needed to support atomic auditing. We give implementations of atomic audit when there are either multiple readers or multiple auditors (but not both) using primitives with consensus number 2 (swap and fetch&add). When there are multiple readers and multiple auditors, the implementation uses compare&swap. These findings motivate a weaker definition, in which audit operations are not linearized together with read and write operations (regular auditing). We prove that regular auditing can be implemented from ordinary reads and writes on atomic registers.

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Hagit Attiya, Antonella Del Pozzo, Alessia Milani, Ulysse Pavloff, and Alexandre Rapetti. The Synchronization Power of Auditable Registers. In 27th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 286, pp. 4:1-4:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{attiya_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2023.4,
  author =	{Attiya, Hagit and Del Pozzo, Antonella and Milani, Alessia and Pavloff, Ulysse and Rapetti, Alexandre},
  title =	{{The Synchronization Power of Auditable Registers}},
  booktitle =	{27th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2023)},
  pages =	{4:1--4:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-308-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{286},
  editor =	{Bessani, Alysson and D\'{e}fago, Xavier and Nakamura, Junya and Wada, Koichi and Yamauchi, Yukiko},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2023.4},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-194940},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2023.4},
  annote =	{Keywords: Auditability, atomic register, fault tolerance, consensus number}
}

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Auditable Shared Objects: From Registers to Synchronization Primitives

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The Synchronization Power of Auditable Registers

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