Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

Citation
Sameer Pai. "Using Social Network Theory Towards Development of Wireless Ad Hoc Network Trust". Talk or presentation, 11, October, 2007.

Abstract
The evolution and existence of stable trust relations have been studied extensively in the context of social theory. However, reputation systems or trust schemes have only been recently used in the domain of wireless ad hoc networks. It has been shown that these schemes provide positive results as self-policing mechanisms for the routing of data in wireless ad hoc network security.rnrnMuch work has gone into the development of ad hoc wireless networks of sensors. One serious fear that still exists, however, is that of exposure of the network to misbehaving nodes during routing. Misbehaving nodes are defined to be those nodes that are incorrectly functioning or malicious. The exposure of the network to misbehaving nodes would jeopardize its function. Consequently, the data gathered by the network would be insufficient or even incorrect, which would result in the failure of the application for which the network is deployed.rnrnMore specifically, this paper examines trust in the context of routing and reliable forwarding of data in wireless ad hoc networks. The lack of a reliable infrastructure or a central authority in wireless ad hoc networks means that nodes must cooperate to route data from point to point. When a source node transmits data, if the intermediary nodes fail to cooperate and route the data, due to any subset of them misbehaving, energy and other resources in the network are wasted. Moreover, if these misbehaving nodes fail to transmit the correct information or re-route the data to the wrong nodes, data integrity and/or confidentiality could be compromised. Therefore, nodes need a way to distinguish behaving nodes from those that misbehave.rnrnNaturally, nodes can make this assessment by associating every other node and potential router with a trust value or belief in the other nodes ability to successfully route data. Multiple distributed schemes to compute trust values and to help eliminate misbehaving nodes have been suggested. These schemes, however, are slow to assess misbehavior in the network and at the same time they are prone to eliminating behaving nodes in the presence of benign interaction failures (e.g., those failures arising from an error-prone wireless channel for transmitting data). Our work reviews these existing schemes while mapping them to similar models for trust assessment in the social network theory. Most importantly, a refined model of trust evaluation in social networks is constructed using insights from Network Balance Theory and mapped to a new trust scheme for wireless ad hoc networks. The new trust scheme introduces two fundamental changes to existing schemes:rnrn1. nodes calculate direct trust values based on direct observations and mutual transitive observations in their neighborhood; andrn2. trust value thresholds, below which nodes determine not to route data to untrustworthy nodes, are heterogeneous and set autonomously be each nodernrnThe new trust scheme is analyzed and shown to outperform existing schemes using scenario analysis and simulation. The new trust scheme is shown (i) to be faster at detecting misbehaving nodes and (ii) better at preserving the network connectivity in the presence of the benign failures.

Electronic downloads

• HTML

  Sameer Pai. <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/301.html"
  ><i>Using Social Network Theory Towards Development
  of Wireless Ad Hoc Network Trust</i></a>, Talk
  or presentation,  11, October, 2007.

• Plain text

  Sameer Pai. "Using Social Network Theory Towards
  Development of Wireless Ad Hoc Network Trust". Talk or
  presentation,  11, October, 2007.

• BibTeX

  @presentation{Pai07_UsingSocialNetworkTheoryTowardsDevelopmentOfWireless,
      author = {Sameer Pai},
      title = {Using Social Network Theory Towards Development of
                Wireless Ad Hoc Network Trust},
      day = {11},
      month = {October},
      year = {2007},
      abstract = {The evolution and existence of stable trust
                relations have been studied extensively in the
                context of social theory. However, reputation
                systems or trust schemes have only been recently
                used in the domain of wireless ad hoc networks. It
                has been shown that these schemes provide positive
                results as self-policing mechanisms for the
                routing of data in wireless ad hoc network
                security.rnrnMuch work has gone into the
                development of ad hoc wireless networks of
                sensors. One serious fear that still exists,
                however, is that of exposure of the network to
                misbehaving nodes during routing. Misbehaving
                nodes are defined to be those nodes that are
                incorrectly functioning or malicious. The exposure
                of the network to misbehaving nodes would
                jeopardize its function. Consequently, the data
                gathered by the network would be insufficient or
                even incorrect, which would result in the failure
                of the application for which the network is
                deployed.rnrnMore specifically, this paper
                examines trust in the context of routing and
                reliable forwarding of data in wireless ad hoc
                networks. The lack of a reliable infrastructure or
                a central authority in wireless ad hoc networks
                means that nodes must cooperate to route data from
                point to point. When a source node transmits data,
                if the intermediary nodes fail to cooperate and
                route the data, due to any subset of them
                misbehaving, energy and other resources in the
                network are wasted. Moreover, if these misbehaving
                nodes fail to transmit the correct information or
                re-route the data to the wrong nodes, data
                integrity and/or confidentiality could be
                compromised. Therefore, nodes need a way to
                distinguish behaving nodes from those that
                misbehave.rnrnNaturally, nodes can make this
                assessment by associating every other node and
                potential router with a trust value or belief in
                the other nodes ability to successfully route
                data. Multiple distributed schemes to compute
                trust values and to help eliminate misbehaving
                nodes have been suggested. These schemes, however,
                are slow to assess misbehavior in the network and
                at the same time they are prone to eliminating
                behaving nodes in the presence of benign
                interaction failures (e.g., those failures arising
                from an error-prone wireless channel for
                transmitting data). Our work reviews these
                existing schemes while mapping them to similar
                models for trust assessment in the social network
                theory. Most importantly, a refined model of trust
                evaluation in social networks is constructed using
                insights from Network Balance Theory and mapped to
                a new trust scheme for wireless ad hoc networks.
                The new trust scheme introduces two fundamental
                changes to existing schemes:rnrn1. nodes calculate
                direct trust values based on direct observations
                and mutual transitive observations in their
                neighborhood; andrn2. trust value thresholds,
                below which nodes determine not to route data to
                untrustworthy nodes, are heterogeneous and set
                autonomously be each nodernrnThe new trust scheme
                is analyzed and shown to outperform existing
                schemes using scenario analysis and simulation.
                The new trust scheme is shown (i) to be faster at
                detecting misbehaving nodes and (ii) better at
                preserving the network connectivity in the
                presence of the benign failures.},
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/301.html}
  }
  

Posted by Larry Rohrbough on 16 Oct 2007.
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