Short paper: can your phone trust your friend selection?

Abstract

In ad hoc communication, data packets are relayed over several hops before reaching their destination. Spontaneous communication requires that nodes trust each other as communication can be intentionally disturbed or privacy compromised by the intermediate nodes. Establishing this trust relationship within a MANET without access to a central authority poses a challenge. In this work, we discuss the problem of ad hoc trust assignment and present an approach that helps to establish trust relationships between smartphones forming a MANET. Inspired by sociological insights we argue that data inherently available at mobiles can be used to define the social relationship of two individuals. Based on a preliminary measurement-based analysis we show that this data can give an initial estimation of trust between two users and their mobiles.