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.