As
applications enabled by the Internet become information rich, ensuring
access to quality information in the presence
of potentially malicious entities will be a major challenge. The goal of this
research project is to develop defensive techniques to counter
denial-of-information (DoI) attacks. Such attacks attempt to confuse an
information system by deliberately introducing noise that appears to be useful information. The mere
availability of information is insufficient if the user must find a needle in a
haystack of noise that is created by an adversary to hide critical information.
The research focuses on the characterization of information quality metrics
that are relevant in the presence of DoI attacks. In particular, two
complementary metrics are explored. Information regularity captures
predictability in the patterns of information creation and access. The second
metric, information quality trust, captures the known ability of an information
source to meet the needs of its clients. The development of techniques to
derive the values of these metrics for
information sources is a key goal of the research. Other planned research
activities include the building of a distributed information infrastructure and
experimental evaluation of defensive techniques against DoI attacks.