Automated trust negotiation is an approach to establishing trust between strangers through the exchange of digital credentials and the use of access control policies that specify what combinations of credentials a stranger must disclose in order to gain access to each local service or credential. We introduce the concept of a trust negotiation protocol, which defines the ordering of messages and the type of information messages will contain. To carry out trust negotiation, a party pairs its negotiation protocol with a trust negotiation strategy that controls the exact content of the messages, i.e., which credentials to disclose, when to disclose them, and when to terminate a negotiation. There are a huge number of possible strategies for negotiating trust, each with different properties with respect to speed of negotiations and caution in giving out credentials and policies. In the autonomous world of the Internet, entities will want the freedom to choose negotiation strategies that ...
Ting Yu, Marianne Winslett, Kent E. Seamons