Exploring the Feasibility of Proactive Reputations
Gayatri Swamynathan
Ben Y. Zhao
Kevin Almeroth
Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems (IPTPS)
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Paper Abstract
Reputation mechanisms help peers in a peer-to-peer (P2P) system avoid
unreliable or malicious peers. In application-level networks, however,
short peer life-times mean reputations are often generated from a
small number of past transactions. These reputation values are less
``reliable,'' and more vulnerable to bad-mouthing or collusion attacks.
We address this issue by introducing
proactive reputations, a first-hand history of transactions initiated to
augment incomplete or short-term reputation values. We present
several mechanisms for generating proactive reputations, along with a
statistical similarity metric to measure their effectiveness.