Non-Repudiation in an Agent-Based Electronic Commerce System

Abecos is an agent-based e-commerce system under development at the Nanyang Technological University. A key factor in making this system usable in practice is strict security controls. One aspect of security is the provision of non-repudiation services. As protocols for non-repudiation have focused on -message non-repudiation, its adaptation to a ord non-repudiation in a communication session for two agents in Abecos is ine cient. In this work, we investigate and propose a protocol for enforcing non-repudiation in a session. The protocol is believed to be applicable in any e-commerce system; agentor not agent-based.