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 [3]. 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. Much 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. More 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. Naturally, 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 [1, 2, 6]. 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 [5]. Most importantly, a refined model of trust evaluation in social networks is constructed using insights from Network Balance Theory found in [4] and mapped to a new trust scheme for wireless ad hoc networks. The new trust scheme introduces two fundamental changes to existing schemes: 1. nodes calculate direct trust values based on direct observations and mutual transitive observations in their neighborhood; and 2. trust value thresholds, below which nodes determine not to route data to untrustworthy nodes, are heterogeneous and set autonomously be each node The 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. [1] S. Buchegger. Coping with misbehavior in mobile ad-hoc netoworks. Thesis, February 2004. [2] S. Buchegger and J.-Y. L. Boudec. A robust reputation system for mobile ad hoc networks. Technical Report IC/2003/50, EPFL-ICLCA, 2003. [3] D. Gambetta. Can we trust trust? Gambetta, Diego (ed.) Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations. [4] F. Heider. Attitudes and cognitive organization. Journal of Psychology, 21: 107-112, 1946. [5] D. Krackhardt. The strength of strong ties. N. Nohria and R. Eccles (Eds.), Networks and organizations: Structure, form, and action,Harvard Business School Press, 1994. [6] Y. L. Sun, W. Yu, Z. Han, K.J., and R. Liu. Information theoretic framework of trust modeling and evaluation for ad hoc networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 24 (2) : 305-317, 2006.

Electronic downloads

• HTML

  Sameer Pai. <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/343.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 [3]. 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. Much 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. More 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. Naturally, 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 [1, 2, 6]. 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 [5]. Most importantly, a refined model of
                trust evaluation in social networks is constructed
                using insights from Network Balance Theory found
                in [4] and mapped to a new trust scheme for
                wireless ad hoc networks. The new trust scheme
                introduces two fundamental changes to existing
                schemes: 1. nodes calculate direct trust values
                based on direct observations and mutual transitive
                observations in their neighborhood; and 2. trust
                value thresholds, below which nodes determine not
                to route data to untrustworthy nodes, are
                heterogeneous and set autonomously be each node
                The 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. [1] S. Buchegger. Coping with
                misbehavior in mobile ad-hoc netoworks. Thesis,
                February 2004. [2] S. Buchegger and J.-Y. L.
                Boudec. A robust reputation system for mobile ad
                hoc networks. Technical Report IC/2003/50,
                EPFL-ICLCA, 2003. [3] D. Gambetta. Can we trust
                trust? Gambetta, Diego (ed.) Trust: Making and
                Breaking Cooperative Relations. [4] F. Heider.
                Attitudes and cognitive organization. Journal of
                Psychology, 21: 107-112, 1946. [5] D. Krackhardt.
                The strength of strong ties. N. Nohria and R.
                Eccles (Eds.), Networks and organizations:
                Structure, form, and action,Harvard Business
                School Press, 1994. [6] Y. L. Sun, W. Yu, Z. Han,
                K.J., and R. Liu. Information theoretic framework
                of trust modeling and evaluation for ad hoc
                networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in
                Communications, 24 (2) : 305-317, 2006.},
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/343.html}
  }
  

Posted by Sameer Pai on 31 Mar 2008.
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