On security in mobile agent systems

Mobile Agents are potential candidates for handling applications that are not locate specific. One such important area is e-commerce. Proper security infrastructure and guarantees must be provided before realizing any applications. A vital security aspect is securing the agent from the malicious attacks of the host and other agents where it is executed. This security threat needs to be addressed by mobile agent systems. No comprehensive solution to this problem exists. We present a solution to this problem using a trusted third party in the mobile agent system. This paper proposes multi modular design of agents with separation of semantics to the agent modules under a trusted third party environment and execution of successor modules subject to the safe execution of predecessor modules determined by satisfactory integrity checks by the trusted third party. Keywords: mobile computation, agents, security, malicious host.