TrustSim: A Decentralized Reputation and Trust Model Simulator

Abstract

Various security models use trust and reputation scores to regulate device behaviour in a network after authentication. The trust of a node is computed using its various activities and equivalent value. Even though various proposed trust and reputation models are mathematically proven to show security effectiveness, they have to be evaluated considering the real-time scenario. However, it is not possible to test models in the real-time network in most cases. Hence, a simulator providing real-time events is required to test the effectiveness of the reputation and trust models. Also, the growth of blockchain technology brought decentralized trust and reputation models, and decentralized authentication is gaining momentum. Considering these, we developed a decentralized reputation and trust model simulator, TrustSim, which has more features than the existing simulators. TrustSim simulates different pluggable attack nodes and attacks in real-time while evaluating the trust models. The tool is tested against different trust models, and the results are presented to show testing effectiveness.