Mobile Agent Security

Mobile agent technology is a new paradigm of distributed computing that can replace the conventional client-server model. However, it has not become popular due to some problems such as security. Threats to mobile agent security generally fall into three main classes: disclosure of information, denial of service, and corruption of information. Four threat categories are identified: threats stemming from an agent attacking an agent platform, an agent platform attacking an agent, an agent attacking another agent on the agent platform, and other entities attacking the agent system. In this paper, we discuss our implementation of two of the security approaches called Mixed Multiplicative Homomorphic Encryption scheme and Secure Dynamic Programming. These security approaches protect the mobile agents from malicious agent platforms. We also discuss our agent integrity checking mechanism that is implemented using SHA1 digest algorithm. These implementations are done in the IBM’s JAVA Mobile agent system called Aglets and provide Confidentiality and Integrity services to the mobile agents.