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Simulated Social Control for Secure Internet Commerce

(position paper)

Lars Rasmusson Sverker Jansson
Swedish Institute of Computer Science
Box 1263, S-164 28 Kista, Sweden
lra@sics.se, sverker@sics.se

1 April, 1996

On WWW as html, ps, dvi, at http://www.sics.se/~lra/nsp96/nsp96.html

Abstract:

In this paper we suggest that soft security such as social control has to be used to create secure open systems. Social control means that it is the participants themselves who are responsible for the security, as opposed to leaving the security to some external or global authority. Social mechanisms don't deny the existence of malicious participants. Instead they are aiming at avoiding interaction with them. This makes them more robust than hard security mechanisms such as passwords, who reveal everything if they are bypassed.

We describe our work in progress of constructing a workbench to run simulations of electronic markets. By examining the success of different security mechanisms to avoid maliciously behaving actors we hope to gain insight into how to create electronic markets. The idea of creating reputations for the participants is discussed. Finally some legal aspects on using social control and reputation as security mechanisms are discussed.

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Lars Rasmusson