A social network-based trust-aware propagation model for P2P systems

Trust is an important mechanism to promote cooperation among persons in social network. As a security mechanism, it is widely implemented computer networks. In P2P applications, trust among cooperating peers is an essential precondition. It is becoming increasing vital in open, distributed, dynamic and anonymous networks to protect against malicious peers. This paper proposed a trust-aware propagation model based on the social network and with the basis of analyzing aware-computing to attempt to discover the propagation characteristics and regularity of trust being as network stability factor, and to reveal the functional mechanism of trust in the network security, which can improve the stability and robustness of the network. Firstly, we proposed a trust-aware propagation framework that contains three layers: propagation layer, aware layer, and computation layer. And then, the trust-aware propagation algorithm is presented to implement the formation of trust networks as fast as in P2P. A fitness function for peers computes their fitness degree based on contextual information to provide an initial entity identification mechanism, and the process of trust-aware propagation based on Markov process is defined to apperceive of trust among peers to ulteriorly form trust alliance. Thirdly, we built the dynamics model of trust propagation in order to deeply analyze the stability of trust networks. Next, three propagation strategies is proposed for implementing trust propagation. Finally, simulation experiments are carried in the bio-network platform. The results show that the trust-aware propagation model can effectively enhance the security and stability of P2P network, and improve the availability of the peer’s resources.