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M. Ahmed, D. Quercia, and S. Hailes.
A Statistical Matching Approach to Detect Privacy Violation for
Trust-Based Collaborations.
In First International Workshop on Trust, Security and Privacy
for Ubiquitous Computing. (Affiliated with WOWMOM 2005), Sicily, Italy,
June 2005. IEEE.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
Distributed trust and
reputation management mechanisms are often proposed as a means of
providing assurance in dynamic and open environments by enabling
principals to building up knowledge of the entities with which they
interact. However, there is a tension between the preservation of
privacy (which would suggest a refusal to release information) and the
controlled release of information that is necessary both in order
to accomplish tasks and to provide a foundation for the assessment
of trustworthiness. However, if reputation-based systems are to be
used in assessing the risks of privacy violation, it is necessary
both to discover when sensitive information has been released, and
then to be able to evaluate the likelihood that each of the set of
principals that knew that information was involved in its release.
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A. Seleznyov, M.O. Ahmed, and S. Hailes.
Intelligent Spaces - an Application of Pervasive ICT, chapter
Co-operation in the Digital Age - Engendering Trust in Electronic
Environments.
Kluwer, 2005.
[ bib ]
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R. Harbird, S. Hailes, and C. Mascolo.
Adaptive Resource Discovery for Ubiquitous Computing.
In 2nd Workshop for Middleware for Pervasive and Ad Hoc
Computing, Toronto, Canada, October 2004. ACM Press.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
The terms pervasive and ubiquitous computing are used to describe a smart space
populated by hundreds of intelligent devices that are embedded in their
surroundings. Characteristically, ubiquitous computing devices must
blend into the background, unobtrusively collaborating to provide
valueadded services for users. Services are thus essential to the
success of this technology and, as a result, both service discovery and
service management will play a vital role in generating the revenue
stream that is a prerequisite for sustainable ubiquitous deployment.
On the one hand, the services provided should be evident by their
richness and variety and on the other, the complexity inherent in the
environment must be hidden from users. In this paper, we describe RUBI, a
resource discovery framework for ubiquitous computing. RUBI represents a
novel approach to resource discovery, because the primacy of the need
for adaptive autonomic behaviour is established within its design.
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M. O. Ahmed and S. M. V. Hailes.
Modelling Interactions in Ubiquitous Environments.
In UK-UbiNet, 2nd UK-UbiNet Workshop, University of
Cambridge, UK, May 2004.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
In all computer systems, interactions between parties
require the establishment of a level of trust that is determined to be
sufficient to permit the requested action to take place. Traditionally,
such trust has been policed centrally by having authorities that
determine whether or not an individual is trustworthy (cf Equifax
etc.). To make this work, several premises must hold: (1) there is
widespread trust in such authorities (2) the penalties that the central
authorities can impose by withdrawing their sanction are sufficiently
severe as to discourage bad behaviour (3) it is not possible for
individuals to easily change their identity to avoid such penalties..
Keywords: Trust, game theory, risk, ubiquitous
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M.O. Ahmed, S.M.V. Hailes, and A. Seleznyov.
The Dangers Of Invisible Computing: Learning To Live With
Uncertainty.
In Ubiconf 2004, Gresham College, London, UK, April 2004.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
The comfortable certainties about the nature of trust on which most
conventional security systems have been founded have always been
at best doubtful. In pervasive computing environments they become
both delusional and dangerous. As a consequence, it is necessary
for both technically aware service providers and technically na?1ve
end users to abandon the false hope that the behaviour of secure
pervasive systems can ever be predictable or repeatable; they must
learn to accept the same degree of uncertainty in trust for their
digital identities as they implicitly accept in their everyday human
relationships. Computing technology is disappearing into the environment in
a realisation of Mark Weiser s vision for ubiquitous (pervasive)
computing. In the near future, the collision of the Internet with
the embedded systems will mean a massive increase in both scale and
heterogeneity of networks. Security is absolutely essential to making
this a reality, but conventional security measures have little hope
of working; the centralised control of security, relying on the a
priori definition of the role, authority and relationships between
principals is both undesirable and unsustainable in such environments. In
this paper, we explore the need for security in pervasive systems,
the difficulties in providing it, and ways in which sociological
models of trust management map into the digital world. We will present
ADAM a means of enabling the automation of trust establishment and
maintenance through distributed knowledge acquisition and management
over a self-organised collection of agents. These agents collect and
collate information based on experience and recommendations from
different sources and thereby enable trusting decisions to be taken.
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A. Seleznyov and S. Hailes.
Distributed Knowledge Management for Autonomous Access Control in
Computer Networks.
In The International Conference on Information Technology:
Information Assurance and Security, Las Vegas, NV, USA, April 2004. ITCC,
IEEE Computer Society.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
This work discusses a conceptual model
for automatic acquisition and processing of knowledge about users
and devices in computer networks. It employs autonomous agents for
distributed knowledge management. Agents grouped into distributed
communities act as mediators between users, devices, and network
resources. Communicating between each other they make decisions on
whether a certain user or device can be given access to a requested
resource. In other words, agents in our system perform user/device
authentication, authorisation, and maintenance of user credentials.
Keywords: Trust, Access Control,
Knowledge Management, Autonomous Agents, Distributed Architectures
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A. Seleznyov and S. Hailes.
A Conceptual Access Control Model Based on Distributed Knowledge
Management.
In The proceedings of 18th International Conference on Advanced
Information Networking and Applications, Fukuoka, Japan, March 2004. AINA,
IEEE Computer Society.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
The conceptual architecture of the access control system described here is based
on automatic distributed acquisition and processing of knowledge
about users and device s in computer networks. It uses autonomous
agents for distributed knowledge management. Agents grouped into
distributed communities act as mediators between users/devices and network
resources. Communicating with each other, they make decisions about
whether a certain user or device can be given access to a requested
resource. In other words, agents in our system perform user/device
authentication, authorisation, and maintenance of user credentials.
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A. Seleznyov, M.O. Ahmed, and S. Hailes.
ADAM: An Agent-based Middleware Architecture for Distributed Access
Control.
In M.H. Hamza, editor, The Twenty-Second International
Multi-Conference on Applied Informatics: Artificial Intelligence and
Applications, pages 200 - 205, Innsbruck, Austria, February 2004. IASTED,
ACTA Press.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
This paper outlines a conceptual architecture for an autonomic middleware
component designed to provide application-independent access control for
use in largescale highly-dynamic computing environments. In such
environments, most notably ambient/pervasive computing environments,
centralised access control policy determination is impossible or
inadvisable because of the complexity of trust relationships. In
the absence of centralisation, network resources are forced to make
trusting decisions locally, in the light of information that they
themselves can gather. Thus the architecture that is described in
this paper is founded around an automatic knowledge acquisition and
processing mechanism, acting as the foundations of a semi-autonomous
multi-agent system (MAS). The agents dynamically organise themselves
into cooperating distributed communities that mediate between users
and devices (collectively known as trustees) and network resources
(principals). Once activated by their owners, agents maintain user
credentials, negotiate amongst themselves to establish the credibility of
prospective trustees identities and cooperate to gather evidence about
the likelihood of trustees adhering to the policies of principals.
Keywords: Key Words Trust, authorisation, access control, ambient, autonomic
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A. Seleznyov, M.O. Ahmed, and S. Hailes.
Co-operation in the digital age - Engendering trust in electronic
environments.
BT Technology Journal, 22(3), 2004.
[ bib |
.pdf ]
The pervasive environment implies a massive increase in the scale of systems, the
heterogeneity of devices and diversity in services available, making the
complex task of centrally managing the environment unfeasible. The
scope and role of trusted third parties in facilitating trust is also
reduced because of the high number of bilateral trust relationships,
which cannot be predefined and managed statically. Moreover, the
dynamic, mobile and asynchronous nature of many of the devices means
that it is difficult to predict their state or context of operation
from moment to moment. All this adds up to increased uncertainty and
a need for a revision of the methods and concepts used to express
and assess trust and provide assurance. This work addresses this
need by defining realistic models of digital trust that are capable
of dealing with the uncertainties inherent in the environment and
that are aware of the contexts of interactions in evaluating trust.
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A. Seleznyov and S. Hailes.
A Model for Dynamic Access Control in Ubiquitous Environments.
In The 4th International Network Conference, Plymouth, UK,
2004.
[ bib ]
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