Research Issues in Trusted Peer-to-Peer Computing

Sponsor	Ling Liu / Li Xiong {lingliu, lxiong}@cc.gatech.edu CCB 221 / CCB 260
Area	Systems and Databases

Problem
The interest in massively distributed computing (e.g., Peer-to-Peer (P2P)) continues to grow. An important issue in such systems is to support trusted computing. In an open P2P system, peers often have to interact with unknown or unfamiliar peers and need to manage the risks involved with the interactions. Peers need to be able to reason about trust in order to avoid untrustworthy peers and reduce risks. Trust has been a long researched topic both in sociology and computer security yet trust in P2P systems presents its own challenges due to their unique characteristics.

This project is designed to survey existing research on trust management in several areas such as E-Commerce, computer system security, agent systems, and P2P computing. Through this project, students will learn more about trusted computing and uncover research challenges of trust in P2P computing. We define four different mini-projects on trusted computing, ranging from trust in P2P systems, trust in eCommerce services, trust in distributed security, to a selection of techniques potentially useful to address trust problem in massively distributed computing:

1. Analyze and classify potential attacks to P2P systems in general and specific attacks to reputation/trust systems in P2P systems. Are there any existing approaches to counter these attacks?

2. Compare trust issues in P2P systems to trust issues in E-Commerce in general. Are they essentially the same? Or what characteristics of P2P systems make them different if not?

3. Are the trust research results in distributed security area applicable in trust management in P2P systems?

4. Describe reputation systems, recommendation systems, and trust systems. Compare the algorithms presented in these systems in terms of how applicable they are in addressing the trustworthiness of peers in a totally decentralized peer-to-peer system.

References

Ch15 and Ch16 of Andy Oram eds. Peer-to-peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies, O'Reilly, March 2001
You may contact the project sponsors for suggestions on further readings on the chosen mini-project. You are also expected to do a literature search yourself and find more related papers, for example use google to search the related references.

Deliverables

A list of references you collected which are related to the mini-project topic of your choice. You are encouraged to list all references in a HTML document with clickable links.
Write a report that gives a brief overview of what you understand are the challenges of trust in P2P systems and then elaborates your understanding through a discussion on one of the above four topics. There is no minimum or maximum page limit for the report but we would encourage you not to exceed 10 pages (use 12 fontsize and double spacing).

Evaluation
Based on the quality of the report and the appropriateness of the list of references turned in by the due date