A trust-based security system for ubiquitous and pervasive computing environments

Traditionally, authentication and access control based users are the main methods used to provide security for individual computers and small networks. However, now that pervasive computing is encompassing new technologies and attracting more interest, these strategies are inadequate for meeting the special characteristics of ubiquitous and pervasive computing environments because such distributed systems lack central control and have flexible topologies. Malicious nodes are a major threat during the construction of a reliable pervasive network. A reputation-based trust system can track the behavior of nodes and thereby proceed by rewarding well-behaved nodes and punishing misbehaving ones. In this paper, we propose a security system based on trust management that involves developing a trust model, assigning credentials to nodes, updating private keys, managing the trust value of each node, and making appropriate decisions about nodes’ access rights. Through the presentation of a formal security analysis of the trust system, we verify that the stated goals are achieved and that malicious nodes can be effectively excluded from ubiquitous and pervasive computing environments.