Trust in crowds: Probabilistic behaviour in anonymity protocols

Abstract

The existing analysis of the Crowds anonymity protocol assumes that a participating member is either 'honest' or 'corrupted.' This paper generalises this analysis so that each member is assumed to maliciously disclose the identity of other nodes with a probability determined by her vulnerability to corruption. Within this model, the trust in a principal is defined to be the probability that she behaves honestly. We investigate the effect of such a probabilistic behaviour on the anonymity of the principals participating in the protocol, and formulate the necessary conditions to achieve 'probable innocence.' Using these conditions, we propose a generalised Crowds-Trust protocol which uses trust information to achieves 'probable innocence' for principals exhibiting probabilistic behaviour. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.