Fog-based distributed trust and reputation management system for internet of things

Abstract

Internet of things (IoT) provides connectivity between different smart devices. IoT systems aim to make data collection, and processing easier. Studies show that we can expect over 75 Billion IoT devices to be active by 2025. There is an increase in the interest in IoT systems, due to their ability to provide a better quality of services to end users. However, many critical challenges arise when deployed in the various applications. Among these issues are security, bandwidth, scalability, and network latency. Security is one of the most critical issues in IoT applications. Moreover, IoT devices can have different computational capabilities, and might be as simple as sensors nodes, or as complex as smart devices. As a result, it is not feasible to adopt standard security methods into IoT devices. In this paper, we propose a new solution that is suitable to IoT systems. The proposed solution is a Fog computing based trust and reputation system. Using Fog nodes, each IoT device evaluates trust towards other IoT devices and only proceed with an interaction with a device, if it meets a certain threshold trust value. This evaluation is necessary to eliminate any malicious devices from affecting the system and quality of service. It will also help protect the system from many attacks such as Bad Mouthing, On Off, and Self Promoting attacks. Simulation results are provided to highlight the behavior of the system under these attacks. Moreover, the proposed solution is suitable for large-scale IoT systems. A comparison between the proposed model and the related works show that the proposed model outperforms the previous works in terms of suitability to IoT systems, and security.