Exploiting trust-based social networks for distributed protection of sensitive data

Shouhuai Xu, Xiaohu Li, Timothy Paul Parker, Xueping Wang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

Howcan we protect sensitive data of average users? In this paper, we propose taking advantage of real-life social trust between average users (called "trust-based social networks") as well as threshold cryptography. This leads to a new type of complex systems, for which we define and characterize the following novel properties: 1) attack-resilience, which captures the consequences of computers getting compromised; 2) security utility of anonymous social networks, which captures the security gained when the underlying social network links are not known to the attacker; 3) security utility of psychological soundness, which captures the security gained when a user keeps a decisive share of its sensitive data; 4) availability, which captures the effect when computers are not always responsive; 5) the trade-off between attack-resilience and availability.

Original languageEnglish
Article number5639080
Pages (from-to)39-52
Number of pages14
JournalIEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
Volume6
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2011

Keywords

  • Anonymity
  • availability
  • complex system
  • security
  • social network
  • social trust
  • threshold cryptography

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