A Socially-Aware Operating System for Trustworthy Computing

Traditional security models based on distinguishing trusted from untrusted pieces of data and program behavior continue to face difficulties keeping up with attackers´ levels of sophistication and ingenuity. In this position paper, we present a novel computing paradigm for trustworthy computing whose application, operating system (OS) and architecture can leverage social trust to enhance the robustness and diversity of security mechanisms of any Internet-based computing environment. Our model would allow online social network (OSN) users to assign trust values to her friends in a privacy-preserving fashion and maintain a trust repository with trust values for objects like URLs, email addresses, IP addresses and other pieces of data that can be consumed by a socially-aware OS, allowing for fine-grained trust decisions that take into account user context and add diversity to host behavior. Our model also automatically infer trust values for people a user is not directly connected. In this paper we sketch the design of a socially-aware operating system kernel and identify several research challenges for this new paradigm.