Establishing initial trust in autonomous delay tolerant networks without centralised PKI

A Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) is one where nodes can be highly mobile, with long message delay times forming dynamic and fragmented networks. Traditional centralised network security is difficult to implement in such a network, therefore distributed security solutions are more desirable in DTN implementations. Establishing effective trust in distributed systems with no centralised Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) such as the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) scheme usually requires human intervention. Our aim is to build and compare different de- centralised trust systems for implementation in autonomous DTN systems. In this paper, we utilise a key distribution model based on the Web of Trust principle, and employ a simple leverage of common friends trust system to establish initial trust in autonomous DTN’s. We compare this system with two other methods of autonomously establishing initial trust by introducing a malicious node and measuring the distribution of malicious and fake keys. Our results show that the new trust system not only mitigates the distribution of fake malicious keys by 40% at the end of the simulation, but it also improved key distribution between nodes. This paper contributes a comparison of three de-centralised trust systems that can be employed in autonomous DTN systems.