Editing Vector clock (section)

== Limitations under Byzantine Failures ==
Vector clocks can reliably detect causality in distributed systems subject to crash failures. However, when processes behave arbitrarily or maliciously—as in the Byzantine failure model—causality detection becomes fundamentally impossible <ref>{{cite conference
 | last1 = Misra
 | first1 = Anshuman
 | last2 = Kshemkalyani
 | first2 = Ajay D.
 | title = Detecting Causality in the Presence of Byzantine Processes: There is No Holy Grail
 | book-title = 2022 IEEE 21st International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (NCA)
 | year = 2022
 | pages = 73–80
 | doi = 10.1109/NCA57778.2022.10013644
 | publisher = IEEE
}}</ref>
, rendering vector clocks ineffective in such environments. This impossibility result holds for all variants of vector clocks, as it stems from core limitations inherent to the problem of causality detection under Byzantine faults.