Mobile Agent Technology

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses mobile agent technology and its universal characteristics. The paper provides a comprehensive exploration of the security issues and highlights how the agent platform must ensure confidentiality, integrity and accountability. The paper also shows how this is clearly an area still very much open to research, design and development.

Outline:
Introduction
Multi-Agent Systems
Security Issues in Communication
Characteristics of a 'Malicious Attack' by the Host
Security Measures
Protection of the Agent Platform
Agent System Models
Dynamic Agent-Based Security Architecture
Issues in Agent Technology (Quantz)
Summary and Conclusion

From the Paper:

"A mobile agent is defined as a class of agent "...with the ability during execution to migrate from one host to another where it can resume its execution and while this may assist in network traffic reduction and in overcoming latencies in the network, the ability of the agent to move around "...does however introduce significant security concerns." (Borselius, 2004) The autonomous- and multi-agent systems "...represent a relatively new way of analyzing, designing, and implementing complex software systems. " (Borselius, 2004) Mobile agent technology has presented a new paradigm in computing. A mobile agent is a specific type of agent with the capability of migration from one host to another where execution is resumed."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Borselius, Niklas (2004) Mobile Agent Security. Mobile VCE Research Group - Information Security Group. University of London. 2004 Online available at: http://www.agent.ai/doc/upload/200402/bors02_1.pdf
• Campbell, Roy and Qian, Tin (1997) Dynamic Agent-based Security Architecture for Mobile Computers. Digital Computer Laboratory. Urbana Illinois. Online available at: http://srg.cs.uiuc.edu/Security/cherubim/papers/internet/internet.html
• Harrison, Chess, and Kershenbaum (1994) Mobile Agents: Are they a Good Idea? IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Yorktown Heights, NY. Online available at: http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:WogVoSBRNWwJ:www.research.ibm.com/massive/mobag.ps+mobile+agent+security&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=71&gl=us
• Jansen, Wayne; and Karygiannis, Tom (nd) NIST Special Publication 800-19 - Mobile Agent Security. Computer Security Division, Gaithersburg, MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Kannammal, A.; Ramachandran, V., Iyengar, N.Ch.S.N. (2006) Reliable Multi-Agent System for E-Business Application. Academic Open Internet Journal ISSN 1311-4360. Vol. 18 2006. www.acajournal.com. Accessed 08-14-2007 Online available at: http://www.acadjournal.com/2006/v18/part6/p2/

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