An Environment for Secure Software Agents: The Virtual Secretary Approach

This paper presents the Virtual Secretary environment for secure software agents which is an attempt to utilize the potential processing and problem solving strength of software agents while eliminating most of the security risks related to such programs. This is done through the construction of an environment for secure software agents, including propagation mechanisms, mechanisms for authentication and control, and common user software. A key element in this environment is the propagation of the Virtual Secretary's user model (i.e., non-executable control software). A necessary assumption is that an authorized Virtual Secretary body process (i.e., a Virtual Secretary excluding a user model) is present at all possible target hosts in the network, or if not, a secure way to start a new Virtual Secretary body process at a remote host exists.