Adversarially-Robust Gossip Algorithms for Approximate Quantile and Mean Computations

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Haeupler, Bernhard, Kaufmann, Marc, Ravi, Raghu Raman, Schaller, Ulysse
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Haeupler, Bernhard
Kaufmann, Marc
Ravi, Raghu Raman
Schaller, Ulysse
author_facet Haeupler, Bernhard
Kaufmann, Marc
Ravi, Raghu Raman
Schaller, Ulysse
contents This paper presents gossip algorithms for aggregation tasks that demonstrate both robustness to adversarial corruptions of any order of magnitude and optimality across a substantial range of these corruption levels. Gossip algorithms distribute information in a scalable and efficient way by having random pairs of nodes exchange small messages. Value aggregation problems are of particular interest in this setting, as they occur frequently in practice, and many elegant algorithms have been proposed for computing aggregates and statistics such as averages and quantiles. An important and well-studied advantage of gossip algorithms is their robustness to message delays, network churn, and unreliable message transmissions. However, these crucial robustness guarantees only hold if all nodes follow the protocol and no messages are corrupted. In this paper, we remedy this by providing a framework to model both adversarial participants and message corruptions in gossip-style communications by allowing an adversary to control a small fraction of the nodes or corrupt messages arbitrarily. Despite this very powerful and general corruption model, we show that robust gossip algorithms can be designed for many important aggregation problems. Our algorithms guarantee that almost all nodes converge to an approximately correct answer with optimal efficiency and essentially as fast as without corruptions. The design of adversarially-robust gossip algorithms poses completely new challenges. Despite this, our algorithms remain very simple variations of known non-robust algorithms with often only subtle changes to avoid non-compliant nodes gaining too much influence over outcomes. While our algorithms remain simple, their analysis is much more complex and often requires a completely different approach than the non-adversarial setting.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_15320
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Adversarially-Robust Gossip Algorithms for Approximate Quantile and Mean Computations
Haeupler, Bernhard
Kaufmann, Marc
Ravi, Raghu Raman
Schaller, Ulysse
Data Structures and Algorithms
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Optimization and Control
This paper presents gossip algorithms for aggregation tasks that demonstrate both robustness to adversarial corruptions of any order of magnitude and optimality across a substantial range of these corruption levels. Gossip algorithms distribute information in a scalable and efficient way by having random pairs of nodes exchange small messages. Value aggregation problems are of particular interest in this setting, as they occur frequently in practice, and many elegant algorithms have been proposed for computing aggregates and statistics such as averages and quantiles. An important and well-studied advantage of gossip algorithms is their robustness to message delays, network churn, and unreliable message transmissions. However, these crucial robustness guarantees only hold if all nodes follow the protocol and no messages are corrupted. In this paper, we remedy this by providing a framework to model both adversarial participants and message corruptions in gossip-style communications by allowing an adversary to control a small fraction of the nodes or corrupt messages arbitrarily. Despite this very powerful and general corruption model, we show that robust gossip algorithms can be designed for many important aggregation problems. Our algorithms guarantee that almost all nodes converge to an approximately correct answer with optimal efficiency and essentially as fast as without corruptions. The design of adversarially-robust gossip algorithms poses completely new challenges. Despite this, our algorithms remain very simple variations of known non-robust algorithms with often only subtle changes to avoid non-compliant nodes gaining too much influence over outcomes. While our algorithms remain simple, their analysis is much more complex and often requires a completely different approach than the non-adversarial setting.
title Adversarially-Robust Gossip Algorithms for Approximate Quantile and Mean Computations
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.15320