Final Report Summary - RATIONAL (Secure mobile networks of selfish individuals)
Overview
Computing technology is pervading every aspect of our lives. Virtually everybody in the Western world, nowadays, carries some sort of personal computing device. Sometimes, people carry a laptop or a personal digital assistant (PDA). Much more often, people carry a smart-phone or a cellular phone. Even the simpler cellular phone in the market is actually a not-so-small computational device. Many of these devices, besides being able to make phone calls, are usually able to connect to each other by using some sort of short-range wireless communication protocol, like blue-tooth or Wi-Fi.
Many researchers think that this technology can be used to deliver revolutionary services to the citizen. The vision is to consider all of these devices as part of a wide-area or even metropolitan network. The nodes are devices carried by people, and the links are transient communication channels that are established as people get in physical contact. While direct wireless communication between individuals will not replace more traditional types of communication (e.g. cellular phone calls, SMS, etc.), it will play an increasingly important role in near-future mobile communications. We will call these networks mobile networks of individuals.
The societal impact of this technology can be enormous. In the future, fundamental information about our friends, our communities, the places we visit could be collected in a completely distributed way to deliver personalised services. Most of the services that will probably run on these mobile networks, even the most basic ones like message forwarding, are based on the assumption that the nodes collaborate. I forward your message since I expect that you will forward mine, when I send one. Without altruistic collaboration the system simply collapses. Unfortunately, the assumption that nodes are altruistic is overly optimistic, and far from being true.
This project is a contribution towards the goal of addressing these concerns. To achieve this result we need a wide range of knowledge coming from the mathematics of social networks, networking, distributed systems, and computer system security. This fellowship is to support the researcher along a pathway that starts from a strong, already existent background in mathematics and networking, and goes through a training-through-research process to reinforce skills in the complementary areas of distributed systems, at UCSD, and computer system security, at Sapienza. During the process, we believe that we will be able to develop some of the fundamental tools needed to build reliable, selfish tolerant systems based on mobile networks of individuals and to influence the research in the field at the topmost international level.
Work during the outgoing phase at UCSD
During the outgoing phase, this research project focused on three main goals:
(1) building primitives for forwarding and reliable broadcast in mobile networks of people;
(2) building protocols for consensus in a mutually suspicious domain;
(3) understanding the impact of 'selfishness with outsiders'.
In collaboration with UCSD and Sapienza, we have developed a consistent body of work that appeared in leading conferences like IEEE Infocom and DISC, and several submissions.
Work during the return phase at Sapienza
(1) building security primitives for mobile networks of individuals;
(2) designing security protocols that can formally be shown to be Nash equilibria in mobile networks of individuals.
Contact details:
Researcher: Alessandro Mei
dipartimento di Informatica
viale Regina Elena 295, palazzina G
0161 Roma, Italy
tel: +39-064-9255367
fax: +39-064-9255368
email: mei@di.uniroma1.it
Scientist in charge: Luigi V. Mancini
dipartimento di Informatica
via Salaria 113
00198 Roma, Italy
tel: +39-064-9918355
fax: +39-068-541842
email: mancini@di.uniroma1.it
Computing technology is pervading every aspect of our lives. Virtually everybody in the Western world, nowadays, carries some sort of personal computing device. Sometimes, people carry a laptop or a personal digital assistant (PDA). Much more often, people carry a smart-phone or a cellular phone. Even the simpler cellular phone in the market is actually a not-so-small computational device. Many of these devices, besides being able to make phone calls, are usually able to connect to each other by using some sort of short-range wireless communication protocol, like blue-tooth or Wi-Fi.
Many researchers think that this technology can be used to deliver revolutionary services to the citizen. The vision is to consider all of these devices as part of a wide-area or even metropolitan network. The nodes are devices carried by people, and the links are transient communication channels that are established as people get in physical contact. While direct wireless communication between individuals will not replace more traditional types of communication (e.g. cellular phone calls, SMS, etc.), it will play an increasingly important role in near-future mobile communications. We will call these networks mobile networks of individuals.
The societal impact of this technology can be enormous. In the future, fundamental information about our friends, our communities, the places we visit could be collected in a completely distributed way to deliver personalised services. Most of the services that will probably run on these mobile networks, even the most basic ones like message forwarding, are based on the assumption that the nodes collaborate. I forward your message since I expect that you will forward mine, when I send one. Without altruistic collaboration the system simply collapses. Unfortunately, the assumption that nodes are altruistic is overly optimistic, and far from being true.
This project is a contribution towards the goal of addressing these concerns. To achieve this result we need a wide range of knowledge coming from the mathematics of social networks, networking, distributed systems, and computer system security. This fellowship is to support the researcher along a pathway that starts from a strong, already existent background in mathematics and networking, and goes through a training-through-research process to reinforce skills in the complementary areas of distributed systems, at UCSD, and computer system security, at Sapienza. During the process, we believe that we will be able to develop some of the fundamental tools needed to build reliable, selfish tolerant systems based on mobile networks of individuals and to influence the research in the field at the topmost international level.
Work during the outgoing phase at UCSD
During the outgoing phase, this research project focused on three main goals:
(1) building primitives for forwarding and reliable broadcast in mobile networks of people;
(2) building protocols for consensus in a mutually suspicious domain;
(3) understanding the impact of 'selfishness with outsiders'.
In collaboration with UCSD and Sapienza, we have developed a consistent body of work that appeared in leading conferences like IEEE Infocom and DISC, and several submissions.
Work during the return phase at Sapienza
(1) building security primitives for mobile networks of individuals;
(2) designing security protocols that can formally be shown to be Nash equilibria in mobile networks of individuals.
Contact details:
Researcher: Alessandro Mei
dipartimento di Informatica
viale Regina Elena 295, palazzina G
0161 Roma, Italy
tel: +39-064-9255367
fax: +39-064-9255368
email: mei@di.uniroma1.it
Scientist in charge: Luigi V. Mancini
dipartimento di Informatica
via Salaria 113
00198 Roma, Italy
tel: +39-064-9918355
fax: +39-068-541842
email: mancini@di.uniroma1.it