Improving Trust Valuation for File Sharing in P2P Networks

Many peer-to-peer networks are used to share different types of files. These files could be damaged, contain false content or even include malware. To be able to choose the right peers, the requesting peer needs to assess the trustworthiness of the requested peer. Embedded trust algorithms enable the requesting peers to perform this assessment without the continuous involvement of human users. Requesting peers can then autonomously calculate the trustworthiness of the other peers before deciding to download. In this paper we show that current trust algorithms suffer from different shortcomings. Based on these results, we designed a new hybrid trust algorithm. We offer a step-by-step description of its working and present and analyse the results of a series of simulation tests.