Trust Credential Distribution in Autonomic Networks

Autonomic networks are networks that are self- organized with decentralized control and management. Accurate trust establishment and maintenance is essential for secure and reliable message transmissions in autonomic networks. Because of the mobility and dynamics, trust management in autonomic networks is a much more dynamic problem than in traditional server-based networks. In traditional networks, centralized trusted servers provide necessary trust credentials for trust establishment. However, such servers are not available in autonomic networks. Trust credentials are distributed among users in the network. In this paper, we develop and analyze distributed schemes for efficiently and securely distributing trust credentials, so that users are able to establish reliable trust relations with their neighbors. Our approach is inspired from network coding, where trust documents are combined during distribution.