DePTVM: Decentralized Pseudonym and Trust Value Management for Integrated Networks

• Published in: IEEE transactions on dependable and secure computing Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 1 - 15
• Main Authors: Liu, Gao, Yan, Zheng, Wang, Dongliang, Wang, Haiguang, Li, Tieyan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington IEEE 01.01.2024; IEEE Computer Society
• Subjects: 6G mobile communication; blockchain; Consensus protocol; Cryptography; Heterogeneous networks; identity privacy; integrated networks; Networks; Peer-to-peer computing; Performance evaluation; Privacy; Synchronism; Synchronization; Task analysis; Trust; trust value; Trusted third parties; Trustworthiness; Value management
• ISSN: 1545-5971; 1941-0018
• DOI: 10.1109/TDSC.2023.3246799

Evaluating and sharing user equipment (UE) trust across multiple network domains can greatly support security and trust management of future integrated heterogeneous networks. But the dilemma between identity privacy preservation and trust evaluation efficacy causes a big challenge in pseudonym and trust value management. Most existing approaches either rely on a trusted third party (TTP) and non-collusive parties, or deploy trusted execution environments (TEEs). They cannot be applied directly into a trustless heterogeneous network environment, where network domains do not trust with each other and it is hard to setup a fully trusted party. In this paper, we propose DePTVM, a decentralized pseudonym and trust value management scheme for integrated heterogeneous networks, where different network operators jointly maintain a list of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">< </tex-math></inline-formula>pseudonym, trust value<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">></tex-math></inline-formula> pairs by employing verifiable shuffling and trust obfuscation based on blockchain in order to support anonymous trust evaluation and ensure pseudonym unlinkability. We analyze DePTVM with respect to correctness, unforgeability, anonymity and unlinkability, and evaluate its performance through simulations. Experimental results show that trust synchronization can be achieved across domains within 9 seconds with our experimental settings and the time taken by the most complex operation (i.e., verifiable shuffling) of operator agent increases linearly with the scale of maintained list. Analysis and experimental results imply DePTVM's potential in practical applications.