FAKE

To evaluate news items producers as well as content generated by users.


Project

Imagine this: Alice is looking for news that is available on several news sites or is generated from other users. In order to restrict the selection range, it is important to include only trusted sources. How could this be done?

“Fake” as a project aims to propose an innovative technical approach to evaluate news items producers as well as content generated by the users and to develop a trust management methodology based on blockchains. 

The trust management system is in charge to retrieve relevant information from the Blockchain regarding all the possible sources that can provide the required news, such as trust and reputation values as well as the previous feedback and the users that provided them, but also other data can be considered, including who provided the evaluation, the degree of experience on the service received, and so on. The system then has to evaluate the risk associated with every news site and provides the user with the best alternatives.


Team

The Networks for Humans laboratory (Net4U) is located at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (DIEE) of the University of Cagliari and is affiliated with the CNIT, the Italian University Consortium for Telecommunications. The Research Group of Net4U is made of around 20 people, including faculty members, research fellows and Ph.D. students. Net4U conducts basic and applied research towards the development of future networks and relevant applications, whose design should be centred around humans’ needs and quality of life. This includes the following themes: xG Mobile Networks, Edge Intelligence, Network Security and Blockchain, Internet of Things, Smart Building, Smart Mobility, Data Protection, and Immersive Multimedia. These activities are mainly funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, the Sardinian Regional Government, the Italian Research Council, the EC and by private companies.


Team
  • Dr. Michele Nitti, PhD, (male) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Cagliari (Italy). Currently, he is a member of the editorial board for the Computer Networks Journal and IEEE Internet of Things Journal and co-founder of an academic spin-off (GreenShare s.r.l.) that works in the mobility sector. His main research interests are in architecture and services for the Internet of Things (IoT), particularly in the creation of social network infrastructure and with a focus on the creation of trust management systems.   
  • Dr. Luigi Atzori, PhD, (male) is a Full Professor at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Cagliari (Italy), where he leads the laboratory of Network for Human. L. Atzori research interests are in the definition of IoT architecture and services with applications to different domains and computer networking. He has coordinated the Marie Curie Initial Training Network on QoE for multimedia services, which involved ten European Institutions in Europe and one in South Korea. He has been the associate editor for many journals, and he is a Senior Member of IEEE. 

Blockchain experience

The team involved in the project have worked for several years on applying the concept of trust to the Internet of Things (IoT) and is familiar with the concepts of transitivity, composability, personalization and asymmetry of trust. The team has experience in proposing solutions to address the challenge of generating consistent feedback for the trust evaluation in the exchange of services in IoT, on the modelling of the interaction between trustor and trustee and in proposing guidelines to efficiently design trust management models so as to incentive cooperation and in applying the concept of trust in IoT real-life scenarios.