A Multi Faceted Approach to Mobile Agent Security

Abstract

Mobile agents are increasingly becoming popular in the development of current distributed applications. However, the mobility and autonomy factors of mobile agents present a host of security challenges in a distributed environment. In an attempt to ensure security of the mobile agent against a malicious host, a security framework is proposed. Our security mechanism uses a multi-faceted approach to protect mobile agents and must be incorporated from the design stage of agent systems. We identify major security threats against mobile agents by a malicious platform and propose algorithms to counter them. We then test a multi-agent system that incorporates these algorithms against one that doesn't and compare the results.

Protecting Mobile Agent using Enhanced Reference Monitor based Security Framework

“…Moreover, among the mobile agent's security frameworks designed to prevent most threat attacks is the multi-facet security approach proposed by [10]. This security strategy is purposely to contain most of the threats dogging multi-agent systems, especially for the malicious hosts attack.…”