Evaluation of two security schemes for mobile agents

Abstract

In this article, we submit and compare two different but complementary approaches to the problem of protecting mobile agents in untrusted computing environments. The first alternative, a technique for protection of mobile agents built upon an asymmetric cryptographic system resistant to conventional cryptoanalysis techniques, is based on the application of one-time keys. The second solution, geared towards computing environments supporting public-key cryptographic systems, permits the simultaneous protection of the code and data areas of mobile agents that travel in an information network. This latter protection mechanism can be implemented using any asymmetric cryptosystem.We believe the protection strategies we have developed in our investigation are the first complete solution for the protection of mobile agents in distributed computing environments.

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Index Terms

• Computer systems organization

  • Architectures

    • Distributed architectures

• Information systems

  • Information retrieval

    • Search engine architectures and scalability

      • Distributed retrieval

      • Peer-to-peer retrieval

  • Information storage systems

    • Storage architectures

      • Distributed storage

      • Storage network architectures

• Networks

  • Network architectures

  • Network protocols

• Software and its engineering

  • Software organization and properties

    • Software system structures

      • Distributed systems organizing principles

        • Organizing principles for web applications