# kaal:claim:3266953-028

**Claim.** A Web of Trust reputation system can be gamed with sockpuppet accounts, because an attacker can behave well for a while and then transact with himself repeatedly and rate himself high to raise his reputation arbitrarily.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- reputation systems based on counting positive peer rated transactions

**Source quote.**

> If I use a lot of sockpuppet accounts, I can raise my reputation arbitrarily high, by behaving well for a while, then making a lot of transactions with myself and rating myself high.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Gopinath Sivalingam, *Reputation Protocol for the Internet of Trust - Conceptual Whitepaper* (2018), Sockpuppet Protocol, page 21

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Gopinath Sivalingam, Reputation Protocol for the Internet of Trust - Conceptual Whitepaper (2018). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3266953

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `781758dea356e55d79c73ad7f1debe7c83de398bd1cd9e0a9a6c2802f276b4c0` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20et%20al.%20-%202018%20-%20Reputation%20Protocol%20for%20the%20Internet%20of%20Trust%20-%20Conceptual%20Whitepaper.pdf

**Failure mode.** sockpuppet self dealing in web of trust  (family: sybil-and-identity-attack)

**Topics.** reputation, consensus-and-security, regulatory-failure

**Keywords.** web-of-trust, sockpuppet, sybil-attack, reputation-gaming

**Related claims.**

- extended_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782210-008
- generalizes: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/4067783-035
- extended_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782210-011
- extended_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782210-018
- supported_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782210-026

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.