Secure mobile agent system and its application in the trust building process of virtual enterprises

Abstract

The paradigm of mobile agents may be used in large-scale distributed systems due to its flexibility that comes from the mobility notion. However, this promising technology brings some security concerns of its own. This paper focuses on mechanisms of the Mobile Agent Security Scheme – MASS – for protecting mobile agents against malicious platforms by considering large-scale systems. This proposed scheme, based on secure data repositories, comprises prevention and detection cryptographic protocols of agent security violation. The scheme is based on the SPKI/SDSI infrastructure and on the concept of SPKI Federation for providing scalability and flexibility to the distributed applications on the Internet. In addition, it proposes an approach on how trust building in mobile agent-based architectures can be reinforced by the use of security mechanisms in the search and select of partners for creating a Virtual Enterprise. A prototype of the MASS was implemented and integrated in order to demonstrate its suitability for a distributed application with mobile agents (MobiCII system).