Collaborative applications like online markets, social network communities, and P2P file sharing sites are in popular use these days. However, in an environment where entities have had no interaction before, it is difficult to make trust decisions on a new transacting partner. To predict the quality of further interactions, we need a reputation system to help establish trust relationships.
Meanwhile, motivated by financial profit or personal gain, attackers emerge to manipulate the reputation systems. An attacker may aim to slander others, promote oneself, or undermine the whole reputation system. Vulnerable components in a reputation system might bring in potential threats which might be taken advantage of by attackers. In order to give an accurate reputation estimate and better user satisfaction, a reputation system should properly reflect the behavior of the participants and should be difficult to manipulate.
To resist attacks, there are various defense mechanisms, for example, mitigating the generation and spreading of false rumors, reasonably assigning an initial reputation value to newcomers, and gradually discounting old behavior. However, each defense mechanism has limitations. There is no perfect defense mechanism which can resist all attacks in all environments without any trade-offs. As a result, to make a reputation system more robust, we need to analyze its vulnerabilities and limitations, and then utilize the corresponding defense mechanisms into it.
This thesis conducts a literature survey on reputation systems, inherent vulnerabilities, different kinds of attack scenarios, and defense mechanisms. It discusses the evolution of attacks and defense mechanisms, evaluates various defense mechanisms, and proposes suggestions on how to utilize defense mechanisms into reputation systems.
