Decentralized Trust Management in Peer-to-Peer Systems

The open and decentralized nature of a peer-to-peer network makes it susceptible to intruders and malicious peers. As a result, it is required to offer a mechanism to rank the participants and to moderate the interactions between them according to this information. Moreover, several systems are totally organized according to participants ranks. This paper presents an anonymous and secure protocol for maintaining and accessing trust information, using cryptography, for decentralized peer-to-peer systems. We offer anonymity of the peer that computes and stores the trust value for another peer. The system is such that voters have secret ballot, votes stay in the system even when the voters have logged out and the decision making process is fast. Experimental testing has been conducted using Oversim, a flexible simulator.