Mobile Agent Security

Abstract

Let’s get mobile! This is the Zeitgeist at the end of this century. The cold war is over and with it disappeared the literally frozen constellation of opposing power blocks. Money is flowing almost freely through a increasingly global economy, data is even more mobile, computer networks at the lowest sea levels as well as in space provide global connectivity to stationary as well as mobile end devices. But mobility is also on a triumphant march into the very core of computers: The JAVA programming language has demonstrated to everybody that software can be mobile too. Today, software mobility is studied at the application layer (Mobile Software Agents) as well as network layer (Active Networks). Indeed, we only see the beginning of a new technology. Consequently, code mobility is subject to intense research. In this chapter we look at one of these research topics that, as everybody agrees, is critical for the success of mobile agent technology: security.

Part of this work was done while at the Computer Science Department of the University of Zurich, Switzerland.