Skip to main content

Macro-level Attention to Mobile Agent Security: Introducing the Mobile Agent Secure Hub Infrastructure Concept

  • Conference paper
Information and Communications Security (ICICS 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 3269))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

The autonomous capabilities of Internet mobile agents are one of their great attractions, yet leave them at the mercy of ill-intending agent platforms. We have devised an infrastructural strategy that allows mobile agent users to delegate responsibility to a trusted third party for the safe management of mobile agents they deploy onto the Internet. Our infrastructural approach is based on a Mobile Agent Secure Hub (MASH) which is capable of providing a large number of security services for agent users and their deployed Internet mobile agents. For instance, the MASH can gather statistics on the track record of agent platforms in providing safe and reliable execution of agents. These publishable statistics act as a deterrent against maliciously behaving agent platforms, as some agent users would be hesitant to send their agents to platforms with unsound track records.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Claessens, J., Preneel, B., Vandewalle, J.: (How) can mobile agents do secure electronic transactions on untrusted hosts? - A survey of the security issues and current solutions (2003) ACM TOIT (February 2003)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Hohl, F.: An Approach to Solve the Problem of Malicious Hosts. Technical Report 1997/03, Universitat Stuttgart (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Jansen, W.: Countermeasures for Mobile Agent Security. Computer Communications, Special Issue on Advanced Security Techniques for Network Protection (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Jansen, W., Karygiannis, T.: Mobile Agent Security. NIST Technical Report. Technical Report, National Institute of Standards and Technology (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Posegga, J., Karjoth, G.: Mobile Agents and Telcos’ Nightmares. Annales des Telecomunication, Special issue on communications security (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Chan, A.H., Lyu, M.R.: The mobile code paradigm and its security issues (1999), http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~lyu/student/mphil/anthony/gm99.fall.ppt

  7. Farmer, W.M., Guttman, J.D., Swarup, V.: Security for Mobile Agents: Issues and Requirements. In: Presented at the 1996 National Information Systems Security Conference, Baltimore, MD, USA (1996), http://csrc.nist.gov/nissc/1996/papers/NISSC96/paper033/SWARUP96.PDF

  8. Hohl, F.: Time Limited Blackbox Security: Protecting Mobile Agents From Malicious Hosts. In: Vigna, G. (ed.) Mobile Agents and Security. LNCS, vol. 1419, pp. 92–113. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Wilhelm, U.: Cryptographically Protected Objects. Technical report, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Wilhelm, U.G., Staamann, S., Buttyán, L.: Introducing trusted third parties to the mobile agent paradigm. In: Vitek, J. (ed.) Secure Internet Programming. LNCS, vol. 1603, pp. 471–491. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. NAI Labs: Secure Execution Environments: Self-Protecting Mobile Agents (2002), http://www.pgp.com/research/nailabs/secure-execution/self-protecting.asp

  12. Riordan, J., Schneier, B.: Environmental Key Generation towards Clueless Agents. In: Vigna, G. (ed.) Mobile Agents and Security. LNCS, vol. 1419, pp. 15–24. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Sander, T., Tschudin, C.F.: Protecting Mobile Agents Against Malicious Hosts. In: Vigna, G. (ed.) Mobile Agents and Security, Heidelberg, Germany. LNCS, pp. 44–60. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Roth, V.: Mutual Protection of Co-operating Agents. In: Secure Internet Programming, pp. 275–285 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Fischmeister, S.: Building Secure Mobile Agents: The Supervisor-Worker Framework. Master’s thesis, Technical University of Vienna (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Hohl, F.: A framework to protect mobile agents by using reference states. In: International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, pp. 410–417 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Giansiracusa, M., Russell, S., Clark, A.: Clever Use of Trusted Third Parties for Mobile Agent Security. In: Applied Cryptography and Network Security – Technical Track, pp. 398–407. ICISA Press (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Roth, V.: On the robustness of some cryptographic protocols for mobile agent protection. In: Picco, G.P. (ed.) MA 2001. LNCS, vol. 2240, p. 1. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Roth, V.: Empowering mobile software agents. In: Suri, N. (ed.) MA 2002. LNCS, vol. 2535, pp. 47–63. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Roth, V., Jalali-Sohi, M.: Concepts and architecture of a security-centric mobile agent server. In: Fifth International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems (ISADS 2001), pp. 435–442. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Giansiracusa, M., Russell, S., Clark, A., Hynd, J.: A Step Closer to a Secure Internet Mobile Agent Community, Submitted to The Fifth Asia-Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Conference (APIEMS 2004) (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Hohl, F.: A Protocol to Detect Malicious Hosts Attacks by Using Reference States. Technical report, Universität Stuttgart, Fakultät Informatik (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Farmer, W.M., Guttman, J.D., Swarup, V.: Security for Mobile Agents: Authentication and State Appraisal. In: Proceedings of the Fourth European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, Rome, Italy, pp. 118–130 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Giansiracusa, M., Russell, S., Clark, A., Hynd, J.: MASHIn Reputation Ratings as a Deterrent Against Poor Behaviour. To be submitted to The 3rd Workshop on the Internet, Telecommunications and Signal Processing (WITSP 2004) (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Tan, H.K., Moreau, L.: Trust Relationships in a Mobile Agent System. In: Picco, G.P. (ed.) MA 2001. LNCS, vol. 2240, pp. 15–30. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Rasmusson, L., Jansson, S.: Simulated social control for secure Internet commerce, pp. 18–26 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Mandry, T., Pernul, G., Röhm, A.W.: Mobile agents on electronic markets – opportunities, risks and agent protection. In: Klein, S., Gricar, J., Pucihar, A. (eds.) 12th Bled Electronic Commerce Conference, Moderna Organizacija (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Algesheimer, J., Cachin, C., Camenisch, J., Karjoth, G.: Cryptographic Security for Mobile Code. In: Proc. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, IEEE, Los Alamitos (2000)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Giansiracusa, M., Russell, S., Clark, A., Roth, V. (2004). Macro-level Attention to Mobile Agent Security: Introducing the Mobile Agent Secure Hub Infrastructure Concept. In: Lopez, J., Qing, S., Okamoto, E. (eds) Information and Communications Security. ICICS 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3269. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30191-2_27

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30191-2_27

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-23563-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-30191-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics