Editing Byzantine fault (section)

{{short description|Fault in a computer system that presents different symptoms to different observers}}
{{Other uses|Byzantine (disambiguation)}}
A '''Byzantine fault''' is a condition of a system, particularly a [[distributed computing]] system, where a fault occurs such that different symptoms are presented to different observers, including imperfect information on whether a system component has failed. The term takes its name from an [[allegory]], the "Byzantine generals problem",<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal | last1 = Lamport | first1 = L. | author-link1 = Leslie Lamport| last2 = Shostak | first2 = R. | last3 = Pease | first3 = M. | doi = 10.1145/357172.357176 | title = The Byzantine Generals Problem | journal = ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems | volume = 4 | issue = 3 | pages = 382–401 | year = 1982 | url = https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/byzantine-generals-problem/?from=http%3A%2F%2Fresearch.microsoft.com%2Fen-us%2Fum%2Fpeople%2Flamport%2Fpubs%2Fbyz.pdf | url-status=live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180613015025/https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/byzantine-generals-problem/?from=http%3A%2F%2Fresearch.microsoft.com%2Fen-us%2Fum%2Fpeople%2Flamport%2Fpubs%2Fbyz.pdf | archive-date = 13 June 2018| citeseerx = 10.1.1.64.2312 | s2cid = 55899582 }}</ref> developed to describe a situation in which, to avoid catastrophic failure of a system, the system's actors must agree on a strategy, but some of these actors are unreliable in such a way as to cause other (good) actors to disagree on the strategy and they may be unaware of the disagreement.

A Byzantine fault is also known as a '''Byzantine generals problem''', a '''Byzantine agreement problem''', or a '''Byzantine failure'''.

'''Byzantine fault tolerance''' ('''BFT''') is the resilience of a [[fault-tolerant computer system]] or similar system to such conditions.