A trust based reputation model for secure multi agent communication in open environment

Abstract

Security and privacy issues have become critically important with the fast expansion of multiagent systems. Most network applications such as pervasive computing, grid computing and P2P networks can be viewed as multi-agent systems which are open, anonymous and dynamic in nature. Such characteristics of multi-agent systems introduce vulnerabilities and threats to providing secured communication. One feasible way to minimize the threats is to evaluate the trust and reputation of the interacting agents. Many trust/reputation models have done so, but they fail to properly evaluate trust when malicious agents start to behave in an unpredictable way. Most trust/reputation models have not yet addressed this issue. So, to cope with the strategically altering behavior of malicious agents; we present a trust based reputation model for secure multi agent communication in open environment. First analyze the different factors related to evaluating the trust of an agent and then propose a model for effective secure agent’s communication. Simulation results indicate that our model compared to other existing models can effectively cope with strategic behavioral change of malicious agents.