A robust reputation scheme for decentralized group management systems

Abstract

In the literature, reputation systems are used to evaluate other entities behavior and have many applications such as, for instance, the detection of malicious entities. The associated models are based on mathematic formulae, in order to formaly define elements such as the reputation evaluation and evolution and the reputation propagation between peers. Current proposals describe the behaviors of their models by examples, with few (if not no) formal analyses. In this article, we state the basic security properties such systems require and we show that current systems may not satisfy them on specific scenarios, which can be used by malicious entities to take advantage of the system. We also present a new reputation scheme, designed to satisfy these properties, and we compare it to existing research works. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.