Intelligent versus Malicious Agent: A Comparative Study

The agent can be categorized into two types; one is known as an intelligent agent and the second is malicious agent, called computer viruses. These types of agents have some common characteristics; both are intelligent by nature and both have the properties reproduction and transfer from one host to another host in the network, called transferability. The fundamental difference between these agents is that the intelligent agent uses deliberate transport infrastructure while the malicious agent hijacks the resources. The intelligent agents are used in a distributed environment because they are not cumbersome for the network traffic; they overcome network latency, operate in heterogeneous environment and possess fault-tolerant behavior, on the other hand the malicious agents are inefficient and wasteful for computer network resources. This is a discussion paper; we present a comparative study of intelligent and malicious agent and also draw a comparison between an intelligent agent and a distributed object.