Abstract: Automated trust negotiation is a flexible approach to establish mutual trust between strangers that wish to share resources or conduct business transactions in open environments. However, existing automated trust negotiation systems cannot intemperate with each other. The main reason is lack of a unified trust negotiation protocol. A strategy-independent trust negotiation protocol was presented. In the protocol, message was classified into three categories; resource request message, information disclosure message and ending negotiation message, and their form was defined.Three states of the negotiation process and the transformation between them wre illustrated,and the protocol algorithm was expressed using pseudo codes. The analysis indicates that the protocol supports the disclosure of digital assertions including credentials with various formats and access policies specified with different policy languages, and allows adopting manifold strategies in one negotiation process, and satisfies to negotiate in various application scenes, and is provided with distinct generality as a result.

Key words: Automated trust negotiation, Negotiation protocol, Negotiation strategy, Interoperability