Patent ID: 8655312

Claim:
A method of operating a reputation system for detecting a suspect wireless access point in a communication network including a plurality of wireless access points providing access services to client devices, the method, performed by the reputation system, comprising: collecting identity information associated with the wireless access points from a multiplicity of client devices; maintaining the collected identity information as sets of identity information, each set of identity information associated with one of the wireless access points, wherein significant identity information in each set of identity information comprises portions of identity information in the set that can be used to identify the wireless access point associated with said set of identity information; receiving identity information associated with a trusted wireless access point; updating the set of identity information associated with the trusted wireless access point, by: determining the indication of trust of the trusted wireless access point to be trusted if a portion of the received identity information differs from the corresponding portion of significant identity information of the trusted wireless access point and subsequent received identity information associated with the trusted wireless access point matches the received identity information for a first period of time such that the set of identity information is considered stable; determining the indication of trust of the trusted wireless access point to be untrusted or unknown when subsequently received identity information associated with the trusted wireless access point is substantially different to the corresponding significant identity information for a second period of time such that the set of identity information is considered unstable; and updating the set of identity information associated with the trusted wireless access point with the received identity information; receiving a reputation request from a client device, the request including identity information of an available wireless access point; comparing the received identity information of the reputation request with the-sets of identity information to determine an indication of trust of the available wireless access point; and transmitting the indication of trust of the available wireless access point to the client device for use in determining whether to connect to the available wireless access point.