Traceable, group-oriented, signature scheme with multiple signing policies in group-based trust management

In a group-based trust management scheme, peers are partitioned into groups based on chosen characteristics, such as location and interest. The super peer (SP), who is responsible for the storage and distribution of reputation value, has an important role in group-based trust management. Thus, if the SP is a disguised or malicious peer, serious security problems could occur. To solve these security problems, the authors propose a traceable, group-oriented, signature scheme with multiple signing policies for trust management. The SP´s signature is generated by a designated group called the signature group. In the authors scheme, peers in the signature group will decide whether to generate the signature for the SP based on the SP´s reputation, meaning that attackers cannot forge a valid signature. In addition, an outsider also can trace the signers who were involved in generating the signature for reputation valuation.