Police Agents for Enforcing Internet Security

Mobile Agents have promised much as an Internet programming technology, but well publicized security problems are hampering their acceptance. This paper argues that mobile agents are a vital component of any Internet security solution. For instance, agents can move computations to safe areas, and can replace out-dated security mechanisms that adapt poorly to the Internet. To underline this argument, the paper proposes a security architecture that uses mobile agents as its basic mechanism. The semantics of agent security policies in this architecture is also given.