Decentralized Trust Driven Access Control for Mobile Content Sharing

Varieties and volume of content generated from mobile devices contribute to the complications on research and analysis on big data. Increases in content generation through mobile devices, increasing penetration, and decentralized nature are the leading reasons of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) content sharing among mobile devices. With technologies like Bluetooth and NFC paving way for easier and less expensive ad hoc data transfer, content sharing among smartphones is realistic and achievable. Traditional access control among peers in a P2P network assumes that all data is shared among all peers. However, this may not always be the case as data on the smartphones can be personal or confidential. There is a need to address sharing specific data with specific peer, based on peer's trustworthiness with the host peer. We propose a model which controls access to files at a category level rather than at file or user level. We argue that the model preserves peers' autonomy while preserving P2P decentralized structure.