The International Arab Journal of Information Technology (IAJIT)

..............................
..............................
..............................


A Hybrid Trust Management Model for MAS Based Trading Society

The widespread use of the Internet signals the need for a better understanding of trust as a basis for secure on-line interaction. In this paper we provide and discuss existing works on trust management models in the area of Multi Agent Systems and highlight the shortcomings. Our proposed model is not presented as the final solution to the issue. This new model will have a mechanism that allows agents to manage trust not by just one way but a few combinations of different types of trust in different situations. The proposed model is concerned with the general notion of trust, one that goes beyond cryptographic protocols. Findings from this paper can be used for future research work in the area of trust in Multi Agent Systems and to address further the importance of trust management on the Internet.

 


[1] Abdul-Rahman A. and Hailes S., “Supporting Trust in Virtual Communities,” in Proceedings of Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences, Maui, Hawaii, 2000.

[2] Abdul-Rahman A. and Hailes S., “Using Recommendations for Managing Trust in Distributed Systems,” in Proceedings of IEEE Malaysia International Conference on Communication (MICC'97), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 1997.

[3] Abdul-Rahman A. and Hailes S., “A Distributed Trust Model,” in Proceedings of ACM New Security Paradigms Workshop'97, Cumbria, UK, 1997.

[4] Abeck S., Köppel A., and Seitz J., “A Management Architecture for Multi-Agent Systems,” in Proceedings of 3rd IEEE Workshop on Systems Management, Newport, April 1998.

[5] Amoroso E. et al., “Toward an Approach to Measuring Software Trust,” in Proceedings of Figure 4. The OT agent architecture. Customer Master Agent OOT agent Agent 1 Agent 2 Agent n AgAg Customer Master Agent T r a d e r A g e n t s Agent 1 Agent 2 Agent n Reputation agent Figure 5. Reputation agent architecture. A Hybrid Trust Management Model for MAS Based Trading Society 67 IEEE Computer Society Symp. Research in Security and Privacy, http://ieeexplore.ieee .org/iel2/349/3628/00130788.pdf, 1991.

[6] Biswas A., Debnath S., and Sen S., “Believing Others: Pros and Cons,” in Proceedings of IJCAI'99 Workshop on Agents Learning About, From and With other Agents, Stockholm, Sweden, 1999.

[7] Burrows M., Abadi M., and Needham R., “A Logic of Authentication,” ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, vol. 8, no. 1, 1990.

[8] Castelfranchi C. and Pedone R., “A Review on Trust in Information Technology,” Unit of AI Cognitive Modelling and Interaction, National Research Council, Institute of Psychology, Rome, Italy, 2000.

[9] Finin T. et al., “KQML as an agent communication language,” Jeff Bradshaw (Ed.), Software Agent, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995.

[10] Gerck E., “Toward Real-World Models of Trust: Reliance on Received Information,” http://www.mcg.org.br/trustdef.htm,1998.

[11] Gong L., Needham R., and Yahalom R., “Reasoning about Belief in Cryptographic Protocols,” in Proceedingsof IEEE Symposium on Research in Security and Privacy, Oakland, 1990.

[12] Grandison T., Trust Specification and Analysis for Internet Applications, PhD Thesis, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine, Department of Computing, London, 2001.

[13] Grandison T. and Sloman M., “A Survey of Trust in Internet Applications,” IEEE Communications Surveys, Fourth Quarter, 2000.

[14] Holland C. and Lockett A., “Business Trust and the Formation of Virtual Organizations,” 31st Annual Hawaii Int. Conf System Sciences, Hawaii, 1998.

[15] Johnson G., Fire in the Mind, Viking, London, 1996.

[16] Jonker C. and Treur J., “Formal Analysis of Models for the Dynamics of Trust Based on Experiences,” in Proceeding of Autonomous Agents ‘99, Workshop on Deception, Fraud and Trust in Agent Societies, Seattle, pp. 81-94, 1999.

[17] Jönsson P., “Trust in Multi-Agent Systems: Is Cryptography a Way to Achieve Trust?,” presented in Blekinge Institute of Technology Student Workshop on Agent Programming (BITSWAP), 2001.

[18] Jøsang A. and Knapskog S. J. “A Metric for Trusted Systems,” 21st National Security Conf., http://www.idt.ntnu.no/~ajos/papers.html, 1998.

[19] Kotzanikolaou P., Katsirelos G., and Chrissikopoulos V., “Mobile Agents for Secure Electronic Transactions,” in Mastorakis N. E. (Ed.), Recent Advances in Signal Processings and Communications, World Scientific Engineering Society, pp. 363-368, 1999.

[20] Lorenz E. H., “Neither Friends nor Strangers: Informal Networks of Subcontracting in French Industry,” in Gambetta D. (Ed), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 194-209, 1990.

[21] Manchala D. W., “Trust Metrics, Models and Protocols for Electronic Commerce Transactions,” in Proceedings of 18th Int. Conf. Distributed Computing Systems, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel4/5583/14954/00679731.pdf, 1998.

[22] Marsh S., “Trust and Reliance in Multi Agent System: A Preliminary Report,” MAAMAW’92, Italy, 1992.

[23] Marsh S. P., Formalising Trust as a Computational Concept, PhD Thesis, University of Stirling, Scotland, 1994.

[24] McCauley C. and Kuhnert K. W., “A theoretical review and empirical investigation of employee trust in management,” Public Administration Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 265-283, 1992.

[25] Misztal B., Trust in Modern Societies, Polity Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996.

[26] Ostrom E., “A Behavioral Approach to the Rational-Choice Theory of Collective Action,” American Political Science Review, vol. 92, no. 1, pp. 1-22, 1999.

[27] Rasmusson L. and Jansson S., “Simulated Social Control for Secure Internet Commerce (position paper),” in Proceedings of New Security Paradigms‘96 Workshop, Lake Arrowhead, CA, 1996.

[28] Rasmusson L. and Jansson S., “Personal Security Assistance for Secure Internet Commerce (position paper),” in Proceedings of New Security Paradigms‘96 Workshop,1996.

[29] Roddy K. A. and Dickson M. R., Modeling Human and Organizational Behavior Using a Relation-Centric Multi-Agent System Design Paradigm, Masters Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, September 2000.

[30] Schillo M. and Funk P., “Learning from and about other Agents in Terms of Social Metaphors,” in Proceedings of Agents Learning about, from and with other Agents Workshop, 1999.

[31] Thirunavukkarasu C., Finin T., and Mayfield J., “Secret Agents - A Security Architecture for the KQML,” in proceedings of ACM CIKM Intelligent Information Agents Workshop, Baltimore, 1995.

[32] Weiss G. (Ed.), Multiagent Systems: A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1999.

[33] Witkowski M., Artikis A., and Pitt J., “Trust and Cooperation in a Trading Society of Objective- Trust Based Agents,” in Proceedings of Deception, Fraud and Trust in Agent Societies workshop, Autonomous Agents 2000, Barcelona, pp. 127-136, 2000.

[34] Wong H. C. and Sycara K., “Adding Security and Trust to Multi-Agent Systems,” in Proceedings of Autonomous Agents'99, Workshop on 68 The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 1, No. 0, July 2003 Deception, Fraud and Trust in Agent Societies, Seattle, pp. 149-161, 1999.

[35] Yahalom R., Klein B., and Beth T., “Trust Relationships in Secure Systems: A Distributed Authentication Perspective,” in Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Research in Security and Privacy, 1993.

[36] Yahalom R., Klein B., and Beth T., “Trust-Based Navigation in Distributed Systems,” Computing Systems, vol. 7, no. 1.

[37] Zacharia G., Moukas A., and Maes P., “Collaborative Reputation Mechanisms in Electronic Marketplaces,” in Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii, 1999.

[38] Zimmermann P., PGP User’s Guide, MIT, October 1994. Kanagaraj Krishna received his BSc degree in computer science, majoring in systems, from University of Technology Malaysia. Currently, doing postgraduate studies in the same university for MSc in computer science (security). Interest in CSCW and trust management related issues in computer agent community. Muhammad bin Maarof is an associate professor at Faculty of Computer Science and Information System. He obtained his BSc in computer science and MSc in computer science from USA and his PhD from Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom in the area of information technology security. He is currently leading the Information Security Group in the faculty. Currently, he involves as head of a research in the areas of agent security, immune-base intrusion detection system and cryptography.