Analysis of a Trust-Based Access Control Model for Ubiquitous Environments

There are a number of models for access control in ubiquitous environments that are based on trust propagation. Iterative multiplication of trust values on a path from a source entity to a target entity is one approach to trust propagation. In this paper we summarize our model for access control based on this approach. As a novel contribution, we perform experiments to determine the effectiveness of iterative multiplication for trust propagation and its utility in access control for ubiquitous environments. The data set used for the experiments is the real web of trust of Advogato.org that comprises of over 11, 000 vertices (users) and over 50, 000 directed weighted edges (trust relationships between users). Results show that a strong positive linear correlation exists between the direct trust values and the propagated trust values derived through the iterative multiplication approach.