The goal is to design and implement a trust model for distributed multi-agent environments of intrusion prevention systems (IPS). One IPS is the Stratosphere Linux IPS (Slips)[6] which will have a globally distributed peer-to-peer system. With this capability and the fact that peer-to-peer systems are permission-less, Slips determines how much can trust the data from other peers. We aim to solve this challenge and design and implement a trust model as a Slips module. The trust model should be able to evaluate the behavior of other Slips agents (which can also be acting as malicious actors) in a global peer-to-peer data sharing network and compute a trust value. The question that we want to answer is “how much can the local system trust the data coming from the said global peer?”.
The student will analyze different trust models and options to attack them. A new trust model that uses data from Slips will be proposed, and its performance will be evaluated. Finally, the model will be implemented as a module inside Slips and will enable sharing said network data with other nodes running Slips.