A survey on Security Issues of Reputation Management Systems for Peer-to-Peer Networks

The objective of this paper is to present a comprehensive survey of security issues in Reputation based Trust Management system (RTMS) also known in short as Reputation Management Systems for P2P networks. The wide adoption of P2P computing has enhanced content publishing, pervasive information collection, streaming of real-time sensed data and information sharing on an enormous global scale. At the same time, the open and anonymous nature of P2P makes it vulnerable to malicious attacks and the spread of malware. In this paper, we discuss in detail the different security attacks on P2P systems and have categorized them as network-related and peer-related attacks. RTMS helps to establish and evaluate Trust, which is the degree of belief that is established to prove that the right user is accessing the right resource. We have explained the different Trust Management schemes used in P2P networks and have compared them on the basis of trust establishment, security features, trust evaluation and weakness. We have surveyed the RTMSs currently in use and have compared them on the basis of reputation collection, aggregation, computation, storage and degree of centralization of reputation computation and management. We also present a comparison of protection provided by RTMs against the various security attacks discussed. Open research issues and challenges that have yet to be addressed in the design of current RTMs have been presented in detail. This survey can be used as a reference guide to understand Trust Management and RTMS for P2P networks and to further research in RTMSs to make them efficient, reliable and scalable to enable and promote the utilization of P2P systems for large communities and applications. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.