Reliable accounting in grids

Grid computing is a distributed environment in which a remote service is provided by a resource owner to a client by means of a grid infrastructure. One of the major expectations for grid computing is about the rising of a market where users pay to access the computational and storage capacity offered by a resource owner. In this scenario, all the steps of the economic transaction related to the fulfilment of a service are accomplished with the mediation of the grid infrastructure. Several economic models have been proposed for determining how to charge the services offered through a grid. In this paper, we outline one important security issue that may arise in models where services are priced according to the amount of resources they consume. Our contribution is to propose a new security model where secure grid transactions are possible even when resource owners and clients are corrupted. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.