The doctoral dissertations of the former Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) and Aalto University Schools of Technology (CHEM, ELEC, ENG, SCI) published in electronic format are available in the electronic publications archive of Aalto University - Aaltodoc.
Aalto

Trust Management for Mobile Computing Platforms

Zheng Yan

Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Science in Technology to be presented with due permission of the Department of Electrical and Communications Engineering for public examination and debate in Auditorium S5 at Helsinki University of Technology (Espoo, Finland) on the 14th of December, 2007, at 12 o'clock noon.

Overview in PDF format (ISBN 978-951-22-9120-5)   [992 KB]
Dissertation is also available in print (ISBN 978-951-22-9119-9)

Abstract

Providing a trustworthy mobile computing platform is crucial for mobile communications, services and applications. In this dissertation, we study methodologies and mechanisms that can be used to provide a trustworthy mobile computing platform. We also present an autonomic trust management solution for a component software middleware platform targeting at an embedded device, such as a mobile phone.

In the first part of the dissertation, we firstly overview the literature background of trust modeling and trust management. We propose research methodologies on the basis of a conceptual architecture of a trusted mobile environment. Further, we present a methodology to bridge disjoint trusted domains in mobile computing and communications into a trustworthy system.

The second part of the dissertation contains a mechanism to sustain trust among computing platforms. The mechanism builds up a trust relationship based on the Root Trust (RT) module at a trustee platform and ensures trust sustainability according to pre-defined conditions. These conditions are approved at the time of trust establishment and enforced through the use of the pre-attested RT module until the intended purpose is fulfilled. Through applying this mechanism, we introduce a Trusted Collaboration Infrastructure (TCI) for peer-to-peer devices in order to establish trust collaboration among distributed peers. In addition, this mechanism contributes to a mobile Virtual Private Network (VPN) for trusted mobile enterprise networking.

The third part of the dissertation presents an autonomic trust management solution that can manage trust adaptively in a middleware component software platform. We develop a formal trust model to specify, evaluate, set up and ensure trust relationships that exist among system entities. We further present a trust management architecture that supports the implementation of the above model and adopts a number of algorithms for autonomic trust management at system runtime. In particular, special control modes can be applied into the platform to ensure trustworthiness. We develop a methodology for trust control mode prediction and selection on the basis of an adaptive trust control model in order to support autonomic trust management.

This thesis consists of an overview and of the following 8 publications:

  1. Zheng Yan and Silke Holtmanns, Trust Modeling and Management: from Social Trust to Digital Trust, book chapter of Computer Security, Privacy and Politics: Current Issues, Challenges and Solutions, IGI Global, 2007. © 2007 IGI Global. By permission.
  2. Zheng Yan, A Conceptual Architecture of a Trusted Mobile Environment, In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Security, Privacy and Trust in Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (SecPerU 2006), held in conjunction with the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Services, pp. 75-81, Lyon, France, June 2006. © 2006 IEEE. By permission.
  3. Zheng Yan and Piotr Cofta, Methodology to Bridge Different Domains of Trust in Mobile Communications, In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Trust Management (iTrust 2003), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2692, pp. 211-224, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, May 2003. © 2003 by authors and © 2003 Springer Science+Business Media. By permission.
  4. Zheng Yan and Piotr Cofta, A Mechanism for Trust Sustainability among Trusted Computing Platforms, In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Trust and Privacy in Digital Business (TrustBus 2004), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3184, pp. 11-19, Zaragoza, Spain, September 2004. © 2004 by authors and © 2004 Springer Science+Business Media. By permission.
  5. Zheng Yan and Peng Zhang, Trust Collaboration in P2P Systems Based on Trusted Computing Platform, WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications, Vol. 3, Issue 2, pp. 275-282, February 2006. © 2006 by authors.
  6. Zheng Yan and Peng Zhang, A Trust Management System in Mobile Enterprise Networking, WSEAS Transactions on Communications, Vol. 5, Issue 5, pp. 854-861, May 2006. © 2006 by authors.
  7. Zheng Yan and Ronan MacLaverty, Autonomic Trust Management in a Component Based Software System, In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Autonomic and Trusted Computing (ATC 2006), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 4158, pp. 279-292, Wuhan, China, September 2006. © 2006 by authors and © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media. By permission.
  8. Zheng Yan, A Methodology to Predict and Select Control Modes for a Trustworthy Platform, WSEAS Transactions on Computers, Vol. 6, Issue 3, pp. 471-477, March 2007. © 2007 by author.

Errata of publication 7

Keywords: trust management, trusted computing, trust model, security, component software

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© 2007 Helsinki University of Technology

Last update 2011-05-26