PPAM: Privacy-preserving Attributes Matchmaking Protocol for Mobile Social Networks Secure against Malicious Users

People often associate with others who share their hopes, aspirations, beliefs and experiences. This sense of belonging influences people when making friends be it physically or on social networks. Most of the existing matchmaking protocols just match-pair people without regards to the number of attributes they have in common. In lieu of these, we are proposing a hybrid matchmaking protocol that seeks to help match-pair seekers find the most appropriate pair. In our protocol, all private attributes are certified by a mutually trusted third party. Also, a candidate becomes a matching-pair of an initiator when s/he meets a criteria set by the initiator. In our protocol, the number of attributes in the intersection set is known mutually by both the initiator and the candidate but only the matched-pair gets to know the actual attributes they have in common. Furthermore, the protocol guards against malicious and semi-malicious attacks.