Provenance-based Information Trustworthiness Evaluation in Multi-hop Networks

In this paper, we present a trust model to evaluate the trustworthiness of information as well as the information publishing nodes based on the information provenance. We consider two factors in evaluating the provenance-based information trust: Path Similarity and Information Similarity. In multihop networks, information can flow through multiple hops from multiple paths. We model the similarity between different paths which deliver information about the same event and the similarity between two information items about the same event which are delivered through different paths. Both path and information similarity factors are considered in determining the trust of the information. This information trust is indeed used as a feedback factor to adaptively adjust trust of the nodes in the network. Detailed analysis of the proposed approach is presented along with simulation results for validation.