Auditable Shared Objects: From Registers to Synchronization Primitives

2025-08-20

AI Summary

This paper addresses the extension of auditability from single-writer registers to multi-writer shared objects. Method: We present the first auditable register construction supporting n-writer m-reader (nWmR) semantics, built upon an (m+n)-sliding register with O(n+m) step complexity; we further extend auditability to synchronization primitives such as load-linked/store-conditional (LL/SC). Contribution/Results: Theoretically, we prove a consensus number lower bound of n+m for our construction and establish a tight connection between auditability and access-control mechanisms—particularly revocation lists. Practically, we design and verify a flicker-resistant auditable revocation list. Our work unifies auditability, consensus capability, and access control, significantly enhancing data owners’ ability to trace operations on shared objects and enforce fine-grained governance.

Technology Category

• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Diagnosis and Abductive Reasoning
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Other Foundations of Reasoning under Uncertainty
• Natural Language Processing: Safety and Robustness

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Responsible Web: Audits of web technologies, standards, platforms, and applications
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data provenance, reliability, and authenticity

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.

Problem

• Extends auditable shared objects from single-writer to multi-writer registers
• Implements auditable n-writer m-reader register with O(n+m) complexity
• Relates auditable registers to access control objects like deny lists

Innovation

• Extends auditability to multi-writer registers
• Implements LL/SC primitive using sliding registers
• Builds anti-flickering deny list from registers