ANNOUNCEMENT * 

1999 - 2000 

                     University of Hertfordshire

                  INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS ENGINEERING 
                      Research Group Seminar 

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"Agent-Based Distributed Reputation Mechanisms in Electronic Commerce"

Javier Carbó Rubiera (University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain)

Monday, 13 March 2000, 1pm in Seminar Room E374 (Research Hut)
Hatfield Campus, University of Hertfordshire

Abstract

A major impediment to using multiagent systems in electronic commerce
is the lack of security. However the cryptographic techniques needed
are nowadays suitable and well known. The authentication of the
entities in a public key infrastruture, is done by traversing a chain
of trust which forms a hierarchy of Certification Authorities. Since
these mechanisms provide effective security features, electronic
commerce will probably receive soon a broad acceptance from customers.
Then the research effort would concentrate on the scalability of agent
based electronic commerce. The overload of certification requests in
the higher levels of the tree (near the root) will become a new barrier
to overcome. A reputation mechanism would help distribute the
communication overload among communities of agents and support the
search to find desirable and trusted sites.  Each agent would learn
from its own shopping experience and from the liability of the
information shared, updating respectively the reputation of the
commerce and of the agent requested. We will show how our solution
would lead to a low rate of fraud, even with malicious agents spreading
unfounded rumours about cheating merchants.

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Seminar URL: http://www.cs.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/ISEsem.html 
For information contact: Sara Jones or Chrystopher Nehaniv