A dynamic distributed trust model to control access to resources over the Internet
Date
2008-04-10T06:00:56Z
Authors
Lei, Hui.
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Abstract
The access control mechanisms used in traditional security infrastructures, such as ACL and password applications, have been proven inadequate, inflexible, and difficult to apply in the Internet due to the incredible magnitude of today's Internet. Recently, research for expressing trust information in the digital world has been explored to be complementary to security mechanisms. This thesis deals with the access control for the resources provided over the Internet. On line digital content service is exemplary of such an application. In this work, we have concentrated on the idea of a trust management system, which was first proposed by Blaze et a1 in 1996, and we have proposed a general-purpose, application-independent Dynamic Distributed Trust Model (DDTM). In our DDTM, access rights are directly associated with a trust value. The trust values in this thesis are further classified into direct trust values, indirect trust values and trust authorization levels. We have calculated and expressed each type of the trust values as explicit numerical values. The core of this model is the recommendation-based trust model, organized as a Trust Delegation Tree (TDT), and the authorization delegation realized by delegation certificate chains. Moreover, the DDTM provides a distributed key-oriented certificate-issuing mechanism with no centralized global authority. A Dynamic Distributed Trust Protocol (DDTP) was developed as a general protocol for establishing and managing the trust relationship in a TDT structure. The protocol was verified by means of the verification tool, SPIN, and was prototyped to simulate communication and behaviors among the certificate issuer nodes on a TDT.