NIST Special Publication 800-19 – Mobile Agent Security

Wayne Jansen, Tom Karygiannis

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Computer Security Division

Gaithersburg, MD 20899

{jansen, karygiannis}@nist.gov

Abstract: Mobile agent technology offers a new computing paradigm in which a

program, in the form of a software agent, can suspend its execution on a host computer,

transfer itself to another agent-enabled host on the network, and resume execution on the

new host. The use of mobile code has a long history dating back to the use of remote job

entry systems in the 1960's. Today's agent incarnations can be characterized in a number

of ways ranging from simple distributed objects to highly organized software with

embedded intelligence. As the sophistication of mobile software has increased over time,

so too have the associated threats to security. This report provides an overview of the

range of threats facing the designers of agent platforms and the developers of agentbased applications. The report also identifies generic security objectives, and a range of

measures for countering the identified threats and fulfilling these security objectives.
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Table of Contents

1. Introduction............................................................................................................. 1

2. Security Threats....................................................................................................... 1

2.1. Agent-to-Platform ....................................................................................................... 3

2.1.1. Masquerading.................................................................................................................... 3

2.1.2. Denial of Service ............................................................................................................... 3

2.1.3. Unauthorized Access......................................................................................................... 3

2.2. Agent-to-Agent............................................................................................................ 4

2.2.1. Masquerade....................................................................................................................... 4

2.2.2. Denial of Service ............................................................................................................... 4

2.2.3. Repudiation....................................................................................................................... 5

2.2.4. Unauthorized Access......................................................................................................... 5

2.3. Platform-to-Agent ....................................................................................................... 5

2.3.1. Masquerade....................................................................................................................... 5

2.3.2. Denial of Service ............................................................................................................... 6

2.3.3. Eavesdropping................................................................................................................... 6

2.3.4. Alteration.......................................................................................................................... 6

2.4. Other-to-Agent Platform............................................................................................. 7

2.4.1. Masquerade....................................................................................................................... 7

2.4.2. Unauthorized Access......................................................................................................... 8

2.4.3. Denial of Service ............................................................................................................... 8

2.4.4. Copy and Replay ............................................................................................................... 8

3. Security Requirements............................................................................................. 8

3.1. Confidentiality............................................................................................................. 8

3.2. Integrity ...................................................................................................................... 9

3.3. Accountability ............................................................................................................10

3.4. Availability .................................................................................................................12

3.5. Anonymity..................................................................................................................13

4. Countermeasures................................................................................................... 13

4.1. Protecting the Agent Platform ...................................................................................13

4.1.1. Software-Based Fault Isolation ........................................................................................ 14

4.1.2. Safe Code Interpretation.................................................................................................. 15

4.1.3. Signed Code .................................................................................................................... 16

4.1.4. State Appraisal................................................................................................................ 17

4.1.5. Path Histories.................................................................................................................. 17

4.1.6. Proof Carrying Code........................................................................................................ 17

4.2. Protecting Agents.......................................................................................................18

4.2.1. Partial Result Encapsulation............................................................................................ 19

4.2.2. Mutual Itinerary Recording ............................................................................................. 21

4.2.3. Itinerary Recording with Replication and Voting............................................................. 22

4.2.4. Execution Tracing........................................................................................................... 22

4.2.5. Environmental Key Generation ....................................................................................... 23

4.2.6. Computing with Encrypted Functions.............................................................................. 23

4.2.7. Obfuscated Code.............................................................................................................. 24
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5. Mobile Agent Applications and Security Scenarios............................................... 24

5.1. Electronic Commerce.................................................................................................24

5.2. Network Management................................................................................................26

5.3. Personal Digital Assistants (PDA)..............................................................................27

6. Security, Design, and Performance Issues............................................................. 28

6.1. Overcoming Network Latency...................................................................................29

6.2. Reducing Network Load ............................................................................................30

6.3. Asynchronous Execution and Autonomy ...................................................................30

6.4. Adapting Dynamically................................................................................................31

6.5. Operating in Heterogeneous Environments...............................................................31

6.6. Robust and Fault-tolerant Behavior ..........................................................................32

7. Areas for Future Research..................................................................................... 33

7.1. Agent Security Framework........................................................................................33

7.2. Mobile Agent Security Design Tools..........................................................................34

7.3. PKI Privilege Management Extensions......................................................................34

7.4. Anonymity..................................................................................................................35

8. Summary................................................................................................................ 35

9. References.............................................................................................................. 35
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1

1. Introduction

Over the years computer systems have evolved from centralized monolithic computing

devices supporting static applications, into client-server environments that allow complex

forms of distributed computing. Throughout this evolution limited forms of code mobility

have existed: the earliest being remote job entry terminals used to submit programs to a

central computer and the latest being Java applets downloaded from web servers into web

browsers. A new phase of evolution is now under way that goes one step further, allowing

complete mobility of cooperating applications among supporting platforms to form a

large-scale, loosely-coupled distributed system.

The catalysts for this evolutionary path are mobile software agents – programs that are

goal-directed and capable of suspending their execution on one platform and moving to

another platform where they resume execution. More precisely, a software agent is a

program that can exercise an individual's or organization's authority, work autonomously

toward a goal, and meet and interact with other agents. Possible interactions among

agents include contract and service negotiation, auctioning, and bartering. Agents may be

either stationary, always resident at a single platform; or mobile, capable of moving among

different platforms at different times. The reader is referred to [1] for a more extensive

introduction to the subject. This paper focuses mainly on the security issues that arise

when mobility comes into play.

A spectrum of differing shades of mobility exists, corresponding to the possible variations

of relocating code and state information, including the values of instance variables, the

program counter, execution stack, etc. [2]. For example, a simple agent written as a Java1

applet [3] has mobility of code through the movement of class files from a web server to a

web browser. However, no associated state information is conveyed. In contrast, Aglets

[4], developed at IBM Japan, builds upon Java to allow the values of instance variables,

but not the program counter or execution stack, to be conveyed along with the code as the

agent relocates. For a stronger form of mobility, Sumatra [5], developed at the University

of Maryland, allows Java threads to be conveyed along with the agent's code during

relocation. The mobile agent systems under discussion in this paper involve the relocation

of both code and state information.

2. Security Threats

Threats to security generally fall into three main classes: disclosure of information, denial

of service, and corruption of information. There are a variety of ways to examine these

classes of threats in greater detail as they apply to agent systems. Here, we use the

components of an agent system to categorize the threats as a way to identify the possible

 

1

 Certain computer software and hardware products and standards are identified in this paper for

illustration purposes. Such identification is not intended to imply recommendation or endorsement by the

National Institute of Standards and Technology, nor is it intended to imply that these computer software

and hardware products and standards identified are necessarily the best available.
2

source and target of an attack. It is important to note that many of the threats that are

discussed have counterparts in conventional client-server systems and have always existed

in some form in the past (e.g., executing any code from an unknown source either

downloaded from a network or supplied on floppy disk). Mobile agents simply offer a

greater opportunity for abuse and misuse, broadening the scale of threats significantly.

A number of models exist for describing agent systems [2, 6, 7]; however, for discussing

security issues it is sufficient to use a very simple one, consisting of only two main

components: the agent and the agent platform. Here, an agent is comprised of the code

and state information needed to carry out some computation. Mobility allows an agent to

move, or hop, among agent platforms. The agent platform provides the computational

environment in which an agent operates. The platform from which an agent originates is

referred to as the home platform, and normally is the most trusted environment for an

agent. One or more hosts may comprise an agent platform, and an agent platform may

support multiple computational environments, or meeting places, where agents can

interact. Since some of these detailed aspects do not affect the discussion of security

issues, they are omitted from the agent system model depicted in Figure 1.

Home

Platform

Platform

Network

Agent Agent

Agent

Platform

Figure 1 Agent System Model

Four threat categories are identified: threats stemming from an agent attacking an agent

platform, an agent platform attacking an agent, an agent attacking another agent on the

agent platform, and other entities attacking the agent system. The last category covers the

cases of an agent attacking an agent on another agent platform, and of an agent platform

attacking another platform, since these attacks are primarily focused on the

communications capability of the platform to exploit potential vulnerabilities. The last

category also includes more conventional attacks against the underlying operating system

of the agent platform.
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2.1. Agent-to-Platform

The agent-to-platform category represents the set of threats in which agents exploit

security weaknesses of an agent platform or launch attacks against an agent platform. This

set of threats includes masquerading, denial of service and unauthorized access.

2.1.1. Masquerading

When an unauthorized agent claims the identity of another agent it is said to be

masquerading. The masquerading agent may pose as an authorized agent in an effort to

gain access to services and resources to which it is not entitled. The masquerading agent

may also pose as another unauthorized agent in an effort to shift the blame for any actions

for which it does not want to be held accountable. A masquerading agent may damage the

trust the legitimate agent has established in an agent community and its associated

reputation.

2.1.2. Denial of Service

Mobile agents can launch denial of service attacks by consuming an excessive amount of

the agent platform's computing resources. These denial of service attacks can be launched

intentionally by running attack scripts to exploit system vulnerabilities, or unintentionally

through programming errors. Security threats resulting from programming errors and

intentional flaws have been written about since the early 1970's [35]. Program testing,

configuration management, design reviews, independent testing, and other software

engineering practices have been proposed to help reduce the risk of programmers

intentionally, or unintentionally, introducing malicious code into an organization’s

computer systems. The mobile computing paradigm, however, requires an agent platform

to accept and execute an agent whose code may have been developed outside its

organization and has not been subject to any a priori review. A rogue agent may carry

malicious code that is designed to disrupt the services offered by the agent platform,

degrade the performance of the platform, or extract information for which it has no

authorization to access. Depending on the level of access, the agent may be able to

completely shut down or terminate the agent platform.

2.1.3. Unauthorized Access

Access control mechanisms are used to prevent unauthorized users or processes from

accessing services and resources for which they have not been granted permission and

privileges as specified by a security policy. Each agent visiting a platform must be subject

to the platform's security policy. Applying the proper access control mechanisms requires

the platform or agent to first authenticate a mobile agent’s identity before it is instantiated

on the platform. An agent that has access to a platform and its services without having the

proper authorization can harm other agents and the platform itself. A platform that hosts

agents representing various users and organizations must ensure that agents do not have
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read or write access to data for which they have no authorization, including access to

residual data that may be stored in a cache or other temporary storage.

2.2. Agent-to-Agent

The agent-to-agent category represents the set of threats in which agents exploit security

weaknesses of other agents or launch attacks against other agents. This set of threats

includes masquerading, unauthorized access, denial of service and repudiation. Many

agent platform components are also agents themselves. These platform agents provide

system-level services such as directory services and inter-platform communication

services. Some agent platforms allow direct inter-platform agent-to-agent communication,

while others require all incoming and outgoing messages to go through a platform

communication agent. These architecture decisions intertwine agent-to-agent and agentto-platform security. This section addresses agent-to-agent security threats and leaves the

discussion of platform related threats to sections 2.1 and 2.3.

2.2.1. Masquerade

Agent-to-agent communication can take place directly between two agents or may require

the participation of the underlying platform and the agent services it provides. In either

case, an agent may attempt to disguise its identity in an effort to deceive the agent with

which it is communicating. An agent may pose as a well-known vendor of goods and

services, for example, and try to convince another unsuspecting agent to provide it with

credit card numbers, bank account information, some form of digital cash, or other private

information. Masquerading as another agent harms both the agent that is being deceived

and the agent who's identity has been assumed, especially in agent societies where

reputation is valued and used as a means to establish trust.

2.2.2. Denial of Service

In addition to launching denial of service attacks on an agent platform, agents can also

launch denial of service attacks against other agents. For example, repeatedly sending

messages to another agent, or spamming agents with messages, may place undue burden

on the message handling routines of the recipient. Agents that are being spammed may

choose to block messages from unauthorized agents, but even this task requires some

processing by the agent or its communication proxy. If an agent is charged by the number

of CPU cycles it consumes on a platform, spamming an agent may cause the spammed

agent to have to pay a monetary cost in addition to a performance cost. Agent

communication languages and conversation policies must ensure that a malicious agent

doesn't engage another agent in an infinite conversation loop or engage the agent in

elaborate conversations with the sole purpose of tying up the agent's resources. Malicious

agents can also intentionally distribute false or useless information to prevent other agents

from completing their tasks correctly or in a timely manner.
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2.2.3. Repudiation

Repudiation occurs when an agent, participating in a transaction or communication, later

claims that the transaction or communication never took place. Whether the cause for

repudiation is deliberate or accidental, repudiation can lead to serious disputes that may

not be easily resolved unless the proper countermeasures are in place. An agent platform

cannot prevent an agent from repudiating a transaction, but platforms can ensure the

availability of sufficiently strong evidence to support the resolution of disagreements. This

evidence may deter an agent that values its reputation and the level of trust others place in

it, from falsely repudiating future transactions. Disagreements may arise not only when an

agent falsely repudiates a transaction, but also because imperfect business processes may

lead to different views of events. Repudiation often occurs within non-agent systems and

real-life business transactions within an organization. Documents are occasionally forged,

documents are often lost, created by someone without authorization, or modified without

being properly reviewed. Since an agent may repudiate a transaction as the result of a

misunderstanding, it is important that the agents and agent platforms involved in the

transaction maintain records to help resolve any dispute.

2.2.4. Unauthorized Access

If the agent platform has weak or no control mechanisms in place, an agent can directly

interfere with another agent by invoking its public methods (e.g., attempt buffer overflow,

reset to initial state, etc.), or by accessing and modifying the agent's data or code.

Modification of an agent’s code is a particularly insidious form of attack, since it can

radically change the agent's behavior (e.g., turning a trusted agent into malicious one). An

agent may also gain information about other agents’ activities by using platform services

to eavesdrop on their communications.

2.3. Platform-to-Agent

The platform-to-agent category represents the set of threats in which platforms

compromise the security of agents. This set of threats includes masquerading, denial of

service, eavesdropping, and alteration.

2.3.1. Masquerade

One agent platform can masquerade as another platform in an effort to deceive a mobile

agent as to its true destination and corresponding security domain. An agent platform

masquerading as a trusted third party may be able to lure unsuspecting agents to the

platform and extract sensitive information from these agents. The masquerading platform

can harm both the visiting agent and the platform whose identity it has assumed. An agent

that masquerades as another agent can harm other agents only through the messages they

exchange and the actions they take as a result of these messages, but a malicious platform

that masquerades as an authorized platform can do more harm to the duped agent than a
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single agent can do on its own. The threat of a malicious platform altering an agent's code,

state, or data is discussed in more detail in section 2.3.4.

2.3.2. Denial of Service

When an agent arrives at an agent platform, it expects the platform to execute the agent's

requests faithfully, provide fair allocation of resources, and abide by quality of service

agreements. A malicious agent platform, however, may ignore agent service requests,

introduce unacceptable delays for critical tasks such as placing market orders in a stock

market, simply not execute the agent’s code, or even terminate the agent without

notification. Agents on other platforms waiting for the results of a non-responsive agent

on a malicious platform must be careful to avoid becoming deadlocked. An agent can also

become livelocked if a malicious platform, or programming error, creates a situation in

which some critical stage of the agent's task is unable to finish because more work is

continuously created for it to do. Agent livelock differs from agent deadlock in that the

livelocked agent is not blocked or waiting for anything, but is continuously given tasks to

perform and can never catch up or achieve its goal.

2.3.3. Eavesdropping

The classical eavesdropping threat involves the interception and monitoring of secret

communications. The threat of eavesdropping, however, is further exacerbated in mobile

agent systems because the agent platform can not only monitor communications, but also

can monitor every instruction executed by the agent, all the unencrypted or public data it

brings to the platform, and all the subsequent data generated on the platform. Since the

platform has access to the agent’s code, state, and data, the visiting agent must be wary of

the fact that it may be exposing proprietary algorithms, trade secrets, negotiation

strategies, or other sensitive information. Even though the agent may not be directly

exposing secret information, the platform may be able to infer meaning from the types of

services requested and from the identity of the agents with which it communicates. For

example, someone's agent may be communicating with a travel agent, although the content

of the message may not be exposed, this communication may indicate that the person on

whose behalf the agent is acting is planning a trip and will be away from their home in the

near future. The platform may share this information it has inferred with a suitcase

manufacturer that may begin sending unsolicited advertisements, or even worse, the

platform administrators may share this information with thieves who may target the home

of the traveler.

2.3.4. Alteration

When an agent arrives at an agent platform it is exposing its code, state, and data to the

platform. Since an agent may visit several platforms under various security domains

throughout its lifetime, mechanisms must be in place to ensure the integrity of the agent's

code, state, and data. A compromised or malicious platform must be prevented from

modifying an agent's code, state, or data without being detected. Modification of an
7

agent's code, and thus the subsequent behavior of the agent on other platforms, can be

detected by having the original author digitally sign the agent's code. Detecting malicious

changes to an agent's state during its execution or the data an agent has produced while

visiting the compromised platform does not yet have a general solution. The agent

platform may be running a modified virtual machine, for example, without the agent's

knowledge, and the modified virtual machine may produce erroneous results.

A mobile agent that visits several platforms on its itinerary is exposed to a new risk each

time it is in transit and each time it is instantiated on a new platform. The party responsible

for the malicious alteration of an agent's code, state, or data if not immediately detected

may be impossible to track down after the agent has visited other platforms and undergone

countless changes of state and data. Although checkpointing and rollback of mathematical

computations may be possible in non-agent environments, mobile agent frameworks make

this task extremely difficult since an agent's final state and data on a platform may be the

result of a series of non-deterministic events that depend on the behavior of autonomous

agents whose previous behavior cannot be recreated.

The security risks resulting from an agent moving from its home platform to another is

referred to as the "single-hop" problem, while the security risks resulting from an agent

visiting several platforms is referred to as the "multi-hop" problem. The risks associated

with the single-hop problem are easier to mitigate than the risks associated with a multihop scenario, since the protection mechanisms within the trust environment of the home

platform are more difficult to use in the latter situation.

Agent platforms can also tamper with agent communications. Tampering with agent

communications, for example, could include deliberately changing data fields in financial

transactions or even changing a "sell" message to a "buy" message. This type of goaloriented alteration of the data is more difficult than simply corrupting a message, but the

attacker clearly has a greater incentive and reward, if successful, in a goal-oriented

alteration attack.

2.4. Other-to-Agent Platform

The other-to-agent platform category represents the set of threats in which external

entities, including agents and agent platforms, threaten the security of an agent platform.

This set of threats includes masquerading, denial of service, unauthorized access, and copy

and replay.

2.4.1. Masquerade

Agents can request platform services both remotely and locally. An agent on a remote

platform can masquerade as another agent and request services and resources for which it

is not authorized. Agents masquerading as other agents may act in conjunction with a

malicious platform to help deceive another remote platform or they may act alone. A
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remote platform can also masquerade as another platform and mislead unsuspecting

platforms or agents about its true identity.

2.4.2. Unauthorized Access

Remote users, processes, and agents may request resources for which they are not

authorized. Remote access to the platform and the host machine itself must be carefully

protected, since conventional attack scripts freely available on the Internet can be used to

subvert the operating system and directly gain control of all resources. Remote

administration of the platform's attributes or security policy may be desirable for an

administrator that is responsible for several distributed platforms, but allowing remote

administration may make the system administrator’s account or session the target of an

attack.

2.4.3. Denial of Service

Agent platform services can be accessed both remotely and locally. The agent services

offered by the platform and inter-platform communications can be disrupted by common

denial of service attacks. Agent platforms are also susceptible to all the conventional

denial of service attacks aimed at the underlying operating system or communication

protocols. These attacks are tracked by organizations such as the Computer Emergency

Response Team (CERT) at the Carnegie Mellon University and the Federal Computer

Incident Response Capability (FedCIRC).

2.4.4. Copy and Replay

Every time a mobile agent moves from one platform to another it increases its exposure to

security threats. A party that intercepts an agent, or agent message, in transit can attempt

to copy the agent, or agent message, and clone or retransmit it. For example, the

interceptor can capture an agent’s "buy order" and replay it several times, having the agent

buy more than the original agent had intended. The interceptor may copy and replay an

agent message or a complete agent.

3. Security Requirements

The users of networked computer systems have four main security requirements:

confidentiality, integrity, availability, and accountability. The users of agent and mobile

agent frameworks also have these same security requirements. This section provides a

brief overview of these security requirements and how they apply to agent frameworks.

3.1. Confidentiality

Any private data stored on a platform or carried by an agent must remain confidential.

Agent frameworks must be able to ensure that their intra- and inter-platform

communications remain confidential. Eavesdroppers can gather information about an
9

agent's activities not only from the content of the messages exchanged, but also from the

message flow from one agent to another agent or agents. Monitoring the message flow

may allow other agents to infer useful information without having access to the actual

message content. A burst of messages from one agent to another, for example, may be an

indication that an agent is in the market for a particular set of services offered by the other

agent. The eavesdropping agent or external entity may use this information to gain an

unfair advantage. Agents may be able to detect an Agent Communication Language

(ACL) conversation signature pattern to infer further meaning from an agent conversation.

A procurement agent may, for example, send three messages to a vendor agent, followed

by one message to its home platform, and conclude the transaction with two messages to

the vendor agent. The vendor agent may send two messages to a credit-checking agency

and conclude with a message to its banking agent. Although the contents of the messages

have never been disclosed, an eavesdropper may be able to infer that the procurement and

vendor agents have successfully completed a sale of some commodity or service.

Mobile agents may also want to keep their location confidential. Mobile agents may

communicate through a proxy whose location is publicly known if the agents want to

conceal their presence on a particular platform. Agents must be allowed to decide if their

presence will be publicly available through platform directories, and platforms may enforce

different security policies on agents that chose to be anonymous. An agent shopping for

goods and services may wish to do so in privacy, but when a financial transaction is to be

carried out the platform may require some form of authentication. Agents can assume a

pseudonym to conceal their identity from other agents, but this pseudonym is reversible

and cannot be used to conceal its identity from the platform itself. In addition, an agent

may not want to disclose which platforms it has visited on its itinerary, but the platform

security policy of its host may not be willing to accept agents that have been on certain

platforms outside the authority of certain approved security domains.

Since audit logs maintain a detailed record of an agent's activities on the platform, the

contents of the audit log must also be carefully protected and remain confidential. Access

to the audit logs must be restricted to authorized administrators. A mobile agents' audit

log may be distributed across several security domains, each having a different audit

policy, so some agents may want to carry certain parts of their audit log with them for

future reference. In some cases the mobile agent may require the host platform to sign

portions of the audit log for which it was responsible.

3.2. Integrity

The agent platform must protect agents from unauthorized modification of their code,

state, and data and ensure that only authorized agents or processes carry out any

modification of shared data. The agent itself cannot prevent a malicious agent platform

from tampering with its code, state, or data, but the agent can take measures to detect this

tampering.
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The secure operation of mobile agent systems also depends on the integrity of the local

and remote agent platforms themselves. A malicious host can easily compromise the

integrity of a mobile agent that is visiting a remote agent platform. The trend towards

releasing open source platforms and operating systems makes it easier for unscrupulous

administrators or organizations to make unauthorized modifications to the agent platform

and the underlying framework. The agent's user and developer may have no knowledge of

the behavior of this modified framework and the effects it will have on the agent's code,

state and data that are under the platform's complete control. A malicious platform may

make subtle changes in the execution flow of the agent’s code and make changes to

computed results that are difficult to detect. A malicious platform could interfere in

transactions between agents representing different organizations and tamper with the audit

trails. This could result in each organization involved in the transaction blaming the other

for not delivering promised goods or services.

System access controls must be in place to protect the integrity of the agent platform from

unauthorized users. Changes to the platform by unauthorized users are more likely to be

detected over time than changes to the platform by authorized users. Intentional

modification or tampering with the agent platform by authorized or unauthorized users

places additional burden on mobile agents to be able to detect and recover from intentional

corruption or alteration. Many security mechanisms available to the agent to protect itself

may come at a serious performance and development cost and must be carefully weighed

against the advantages offered by code mobility. If the agent is carrying out a critical or

sensitive task for which it must assume an unreasonable risk or for which it cannot provide

suitable protection, the agent developer or user may choose to restrict the agent's mobility.

Thus, given the current security mechanisms available to mobile agents, agents may

choose to forego mobility during certain security-sensitive transactions, and limit the types

of security-sensitive transactions a mobile agent is authorized to conduct.

Goal-oriented attacks against agent communications aim to compromise the integrity of an

intra- or inter-platform message by changing the content of the message, replacing the

entire message, reusing an old message, deleting the message, or changing the source or

destination of the message. Goal-oriented malicious attacks on the integrity of agent

communications can do far greater harm to the agent than transmission errors resulting

from poor or intermittent communication channels. Agent platforms rely on lower-level

protocols to ensure the integrity of the agent communications. For example, TCP/IP

ensures the detection of most transmission errors, and processes in the communications

stack detect errors and arrange for retransmission. This error detection and correction is

transparent to higher-level applications that rely on these protocols to ensure the integrity

of their communications.

3.3. Accountability

Each process, human user, or agent on a given platform must be held accountable for their

actions. In order to be held accountable each process, human user, or agent must be

uniquely identified, authenticated, and audited. Example actions for which they must be
11

held accountable include: access to an object, such as a file, or making administrative

changes to a platform security mechanism. Accountability requires maintaining an audit

log of security-relevant events that have occurred, and listing each event and the agent or

process responsible for that event. Security-relevant events are defined in the platform

security policy and should include, at a minimum, the following: user/agent name, time of

event, type of event, and success or failure of the event. Audit logs must be protected

from unauthorized access and modification. Measures need to be in place to prevent

auditable events from being lost when the storage media reaches its capacity. These

measures can include alerting the system administrator when the audit logs reach a certain

capacity and depend on the system administrator to perform routine maintenance as part

of their normal administrator duties.

Audit logs keep users and processes accountable for their actions. Mobile agents create

audit trails across several platforms, with each platform logging separate events and

possibly auditing different views of the same event (e.g., registration within a remote

directory). In the case where an agent may require access to information distributed across

different platforms it may be difficult to reconstruct a sequence of events. Platforms that

keep distributed audit logs must be able to maintain a concept of global time or ordering

of events. Auditing agent actions is very important considering the liability issues that may

arise from the failure of a platform administrator to exercise due diligence in preventing

known denial of service attacks. Legal issues may also come into play as rules governing

the actions of agents may differ in states, countries, and regional trading blocks.

Audit logs are also necessary and valuable when the platform must recover from a security

breach, or a software or hardware failure. Full recovery from a faulty or compromised

system requires not only restoring the system to a safe state and performing some sort of

fault diagnosis, but also sorting out which agents belonging to which organizations were

affected. Audit logs are also necessary in cases of agents falsely repudiating their actions

and for potential liability issues that are unique to agent societies.

Authentication mechanisms provide accountability for user actions. Agents must be able to

authenticate their identity to platforms and other agents, while platforms must be able to

authenticate their identity to agents and other platforms. The level of sensitivity of the

transaction or data for which agents request access may require the agent to offer different

degrees of authentication. In agent societies where reputation is valued and used as a

means to establish trust, an agent platform must exercise due diligence to protect an

agent's reputation from being harmed by other agents through masquerade.

An agent accessing publicly advertised product prices may not be required to authenticate

itself at all and may only have "read access" to certain public data, but if this agent decides

to purchase any of these products the agent must be able to authenticate itself before the

transaction is completed. Similarly, the purchasing agent will require some proof of the

selling agent's claimed identity. Both the purchasing and selling agent may require the

agent platform to authenticate itself before they visit this platform. Humans must be able

to authenticate themselves to agents through whatever means the agent platform makes
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available to the human user, for example, voice recognition, biometrics, passwords, or

smart cards.

Accountability is also essential for building trust among agents and agent platforms. An

authenticated agent may comply with the security policies of the agent platform, but still

exhibit malicious behavior by lying or deliberately spreading false information. Additional

auditing may be helpful in proving the malicious agent's attempts at deception. For

example, the communication acts of an ACL conversation could be logged, but this results

in costly overhead. If it is assumed that the malicious agent does not value its reputation

within an agent community, then it would be difficult to prevent malicious agents from

lying.

3.4. Availability

The agent platform must be able to ensure the availability of both data and services to

local and remote agents. The agent platform must be able to provide controlled

concurrency, support for simultaneous access, deadlock management, and exclusive

access as required. Shared data must be available in a usable form, capacity must be

available to meet service needs, and provisions for the fair allocation of resources and

timeliness of service must be made. The agent platform must be able to detect and recover

from system software and hardware failures. While the platform can provide some level of

fault-tolerance and fault-recovery, agents may be required to assume responsibility for

their own fault-recovery.

The agent platform must be able to handle the requests of hundreds or thousands of

visiting and remote agents or risk creating an unintentional denial of service. In the event

that a platform cannot handle its computational and communication load, the platform

must provide graceful degradation of services and notify agents that it can no longer

provide the level and quality of service expected by the agents requesting its services.

The threat of a denial of service attack being launched by rogue or flawed agents

underscores the need for the control and monitoring of platform resources. A denial of

service attack against the platform is an indirect attack on all the agents that rely on this

platform for agent services and platform resources. Since the platform may be hosting

agents from several other organizations, a denial of service attack on a single platform

may adversely impact more than one agent, platform, or organization.

Ensuring confidentiality and integrity places restraints on availability and also has

performance costs. Encrypting agents and messages in transit may impose unacceptable

delays in environments where near real-time response is required. Ensuring accountability

may also place restraints on the availability of platform services. For example, when the

audit log storage media exhausts its capacity, many security policies disable all services

that create records in the audit log. In an effort to maintain accountability, this policy may

inadvertently create an opportunity for a denial of service attack by simply producing an
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inordinate amount of auditable events, such as repeated failed login attempts, and consume

the remaining capacity of the audit log storage media.

3.5. Anonymity

The agent platform may need to balance an agent's need for privacy with the platform's

need to hold the agent accountable for its actions. The platform may be able to keep the

agent's identity secret from other agents and still maintain a form of reversible anonymity

where it can determine the agent’s identity if necessary and legal. Anonymity in human

communities may help foster certain types of commerce or promote the freedom of

expression by eliminating the fear of retribution for voicing unpopular viewpoints. There

are many situations, however, in which the participants are reluctant or unwilling to

engage in a transaction with an anonymous counterpart. Purchasers of goods and services

may want to protect their privacy by remaining anonymous, but credit agencies would not

extend credit to anonymous consumers without being able to verify their credit history and

credit worthiness. The anonymity issues affecting human communities also apply to agent

communities. The security policies of agent platforms and their auditing requirements must

be carefully balanced with agent privacy expectations. The collection and use of audit

information for uses other than security must also be understood by the agents visiting the

agent platform. Moreover, what information belongs in public agent directories and under

what conditions can the information be accessed from these directories must also be

carefully controlled.

4. Countermeasures

Many conventional security techniques used in contemporary distributed applications

(e.g., client-server) also have utility as countermeasures within the mobile agent paradigm.

Moreover, there are a number of extensions to conventional techniques and techniques

devised specifically for controlling mobile code and executable content (e.g., Java applets)

that are applicable to mobile agent security. We review these countermeasures by

considering those techniques that can be used to protect agent platforms, separately from

those used to protect the agents that run on them.

Most agent systems rely on a common set of baseline assumptions regarding security. The

first is that an agent trusts the home platform where it is instantiated and begins execution.

The second is that the home platform and other equally trusted platforms are implemented

securely, with no flaws or trapdoors that can be exploited, and behave non-maliciously.

The third is that public key cryptography, primarily in the form of digital signature, is

utilized through certificates and revocation lists managed through a public key

infrastructure.

4.1. Protecting the Agent Platform

One of the main concerns with an agent system implementation is ensuring that agents are

not able to interfere with one another or with the underlying agent platform. One common
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approach for accomplishing this is to establish separate isolated domains for each agent

and the platform, and control all inter-domain access. In traditional terms this concept is

referred to as a reference monitor [22]. An implementation of a reference monitor has the

following characteristics:

• It is always invoked and non-bypassable, mediating all accesses;

• It is tamper-proof; and

• It is small enough to be analyzed and tested.

Implementations of the reference monitor concept have been around since the early 1980’s

and employ a number of conventional security techniques, which are applicable to the

agent environment. Such conventional techniques include the following:

• Mechanisms to isolate processes from one another and from the control process,

• Mechanisms to control access to computational resources,

• Cryptographic methods to encipher information exchanges,

• Cryptographic methods to identify and authenticate users, agents, and platforms, and

• Mechanisms to audit security-relevant events occurring at the agent platform.

More recently developed techniques aimed at mobile code and mobile agent security have

for the most part evolved along these traditional lines. Techniques devised for protecting

the agent platform include the following:

• Software-Based Fault Isolation,

• Safe Code Interpretation,

• Signed Code,

• Authorization and Attribute Certificates,

• State Appraisal,

• Path Histories, and

• Proof Carrying Code.

4.1.1. Software-Based Fault Isolation

Software-Based Fault Isolation [23], as its name implies, is a method of isolating

application modules into distinct fault domains enforced by software. The technique

allows untrusted programs written in an unsafe language, such as C, to be executed safely

within the single virtual address space of an application. Untrusted machine interpretable

code modules are transformed so that all memory accesses are confined to code and data

segments within their fault domain. Access to system resources can also be controlled

through a unique identifier associated with each domain. The technique, commonly

referred to as sandboxing, is highly efficient compared with using hardware page tables to

maintain separate address spaces for modules, when the modules communicate frequently

among fault domains. It is also ideally suited for situations where most of the code falls

into one domain that is trusted, since modules in trusted domains incur no execution

overhead.
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4.1.2. Safe Code Interpretation

Agent systems are often developed using an interpreted script or programming language.

The main motivation for doing this is to support agent platforms on heterogeneous

computer systems. Moreover, the higher conceptual level of abstraction provided by an

interpretative environment can facilitate the development of the agent’s code [24]. The

idea behind Safe Code Interpretation is that commands considered harmful can be either

made safe for or denied to an agent. For example, a good candidate for denial would be

the command to execute an arbitrary string of data as a program segment.

One of the most widely used interpretative languages today is Java. The Java

programming language and runtime environment [2] enforces security primarily through

strong type safety. Java follows a so-called sandbox security model, used to isolate

memory and method access, and maintain mutually exclusive execution domains. Security

is enforced through a variety of mechanisms. Static type checking in the form of byte code

verification is used to check the safety of downloaded code. Some dynamic checking is

also performed during runtime. A distinct name space is maintained for untrusted

downloaded code, and linking of references between modules in different name spaces is

restricted to public methods. A security manager mediates all accesses to system

resources, serving in effect as a reference monitor. In addition, Java inherently supports

code mobility, dynamic code downloading, digitally signed code, remote method

invocation, object serialization, platform heterogeneity, and other features that make it an

ideal foundation for agent development. There are many agent systems based on Java,

including Aglets [3, 14], Mole [8], Ajanta [25], and Voyager [9]. However, limitations of

Java to account for memory, CPU, and network resources consumed by individual threads

[40] and to support thread mobility [2] have been noted.

Probably the best known of the safe interpreters for script-based languages is Safe Tcl

[12], which was used in the early development of the Agent Tcl [11] system. Safe Tcl

employs a padded cell concept, whereby a second “safe” interpreter pre-screens any

harmful commands from being executed by the main Tcl interpreter. The term padded cell

refers to this isolation and access control technique, which provides the foundation for

implementing the reference monitor concept. More than one safe interpreter can be used

to implement different security policies, if needed. Constructing policy-based interpreters

requires skill to avoid overly restrictive or unduly protected computing environments.

In general, current script-based languages do not incorporate an explicit security model in

their design, and rely mainly on decisions taken during implementation. One recent

exception is the implementation of secure JavaScript in Mozilla [39]. The implementation

uses a padded cell to control access to resources and external interfaces, prevents residual

information from being retained and accessible among different contexts operating

simultaneously or sequentially, and allows policy, which partitions the name space for

access control purposes, to be specified independently of mechanism.
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4.1.3. Signed Code

A fundamental technique for protecting an agent system is signing code or other objects

with a digital signature. A digital signature serves as a means of confirming the

authenticity of an object, its origin, and its integrity. Typically the code signer is either the

creator of the agent, the user of the agent, or some entity that has reviewed the agent.

Because an agent operates on behalf of an end-user or organization, mobile agent systems

[10, 11, 14, 25] commonly use the signature of the user as an indication of the authority

under which the agent operates.

Code signing involves public key cryptography, which relies on a pair of keys associated

with an entity. One key is kept private by the entity and the other is made publicly

available. Digital signatures benefit greatly from the availability of a public key

infrastructure, since certificates containing the identity of an entity and its public key (i.e.,

a public key certificate) can be readily located and verified. Passing the agent’s code

through a non-reversible hash function, which provides a fingerprint or unique message

digest of the code, and then encrypting the result with the private key of the signer forms a

digital signature. Because the message digest is unique, and thus bound to the code, the

resulting signature also serves as an integrity mechanism. The agent code, signature, and

public key certificate can then be forwarded to a recipient, who can easily verify the

source and authenticity of the code.

Note that the meaning of a signature may be different depending on the policy associated

with the signature scheme and the party who signs. For example, the author of the agent,

either an individual or organization, may use a digital signature to indicate who produced

the code, but not to guarantee that the agent performs without fault or error. In fact,

author-oriented signature schemes were originally intended to serve as digital shrink wrap,

whereby the original product warranty limitations stated in the license remain in effect

(e.g., manufacturer makes no warranties as to the fitness of the product for any particular

purpose).

Microsoft's Authenticode, a common form of code signing, enables Java applets or Active

X controls to be signed, ensuring users that the software has not been tampered with or

modified and that the identity of the author is verified. For many users, however, the

signature has gone beyond establishing authenticity and become a form of trust in the

software, which could ultimately have disastrous consequences.

Rather than relying solely on the reputation of a code producer, it would be prudent to

have an independent review and verification of code performed by a trusted party or rating

service [14, 26]. For example, the decision to execute an agent could be taken only with

the endorsement of a site security administrator, given in the form of a digital signature

applied to the code. While such an approach may be desirable, experience with trusted

computer evaluations indicates that obtaining quality security reviews in a timely fashion is

difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, some checking is better that none, provided that the

limitations are known by everyone.
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4.1.4. State Appraisal

 The goal of State Appraisal [16] is to ensure that an agent has not been somehow

subverted due to alterations of its state information. The success of the technique relies on

the extent to which harmful alterations to an agent's state can be predicted, and

countermeasures, in the form of appraisal functions, can be prepared before using the

agent. Appraisal functions are used to determine what privileges to grant an agent, based

both on conditional factors and whether identified state invariants hold. An agent whose

state violates an invariant can be granted no privileges, while an agent whose state fails to

meet some conditional factors may be granted a restricted set of privileges.

Both the author and owner of an agent produce appraisal functions that become part of an

agent's code. An owner typically applies state constraints to reduce liability and/or control

costs. When the author and owner each digitally sign the agent, their respective appraisal

functions are protected from undetectable modification. An agent platform uses the

functions to verify the correct state of an incoming agent and to determine what privileges

the agent can possess during execution. Privileges are issued by a platform based on the

results of the appraisal function and the platform's security policy. It is not clear how well

the theory will hold up in practice, since the state space for an agent could be quite large,

and while appraisal functions for obvious attacks may be easily formulated, more subtle

attacks may be significantly harder to foresee and detect. The developers of the technique,

in fact, indicate it may not always be possible to distinguish normal results from deceptive

alternatives.

4.1.5. Path Histories

The basic idea behind Path Histories [20, 27] is to maintain an authenticatable record of

the prior platforms visited by an agent, so that a newly visited platform can determine

whether to process the agent and what resource constraints to apply. Computing a path

history requires each agent platform to add a signed entry to the path, indicating its

identity and the identity of the next platform to be visited, and to supply the complete path

history to the next platform. To prevent tampering, the signature of the new path entry

must include the previous entry in the computation of the message digest. Upon receipt,

the next platform can then determine whether it trusts the previous agent platforms that

the agent visited, either by simply reviewing the list of identities provided or by

individually authenticating the signatures of each entry in the path history. While the

technique does not prevent a platform from behaving maliciously, it serves as strong

deterrent, since the platform's signed path entry is non-repudiatable. One obvious

drawback is that path verification becomes more costly as the path history increases.

4.1.6. Proof Carrying Code

The approach taken by Proof Carrying Code [17] obligates the code producer (e.g., the

author of an agent) to formally prove that the program possesses safety properties
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previously stipulated by the code consumer (e.g., security policy of the agent platform).

Proof Carrying Code is a prevention technique, while code signing is an authenticity and

identification technique used to deter, but not prevent the execution of unsafe code. The

code and proof are sent together to the code consumer where the safety properties can be

verified. A safety predicate, representing the semantics of the program, is generated

directly from the native code to ensure that the companion proof does in fact correspond

to the code. The proof is structured in a way that makes it straightforward to verify

without using cryptographic techniques or external assistance. Once verified, the code can

run without further checking. Any attempts to tamper with either the code or the safety

proof result in either a verification error or, if the verification succeeds, a safe code

transformation.

Initial research has demonstrated the applicability of Proof Carrying Code for fine-grained

memory safety, and shown the potential for other types of safety policies, such as

controlling resource use. Thus, the technique could serve as a reasonable alternative to

Software-Based Fault Isolation in some applications. The theoretical underpinnings of

Proof Carrying Code are based on well-established principles from logic, type theory, and

formal verification. There are, however, some potentially difficult problems to solve before

the approach is considered practical. They include a standard formalism for establishing

security policy, automated assistance for the generation of proofs, and techniques for

limiting the potentially large size of proofs that in theory can arise. In addition, the

technique is tied to the hardware and operating environment of the code consumer, which

may limit its applicability.

4.2. Protecting Agents

While countermeasures directed towards platform protection are a direct evolution of

traditional mechanisms employed by trusted hosts, and emphasize active prevention

measures, countermeasures directed toward agent protection tend more toward detection

measures as a deterrent. This is due to the fact that an agent is completely susceptible to

an agent platform and cannot prevent malicious behavior from occurring, but may be able

to detect it.

The problem stems from the inability to effectively extend the trusted environment of an

agent’s home platform to other agent platforms. While a user may digitally sign an agent

on its home platform before it moves onto a second platform, that protection is limited.

The second platform receiving the agent can rely on the signature to verify the source and

integrity of the agent’s code, data, and state information provided that the private key of

the user has not been compromised. On the agent’s subsequent hop to a third platform, the

initial signature from the first platform remains valid for the original code, data, and state

information, but not for any state or data generated on the second platform.

For some applications, such minimal protection may be adequate. For example, agents that

do not accumulate state or convey their results back to the home platform after each hop

have less exposure to certain attacks. For other applications, simple schemes may prove
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adequate. For example, the Jumping Beans [43] agent system addresses some security

issues by implementing a client-server architecture, whereby an agent always returns to a

secure central host first before moving onto any other platform. Agent systems that allow

for more decentralized mobility, such as IBM Aglets, prevent the receiving platform from

accepting agents from any agent platform that is not defined as a trusted peer within the

receiving platform’s security policy. Alternatively, the originator can restrict an agent’s

itinerary to only a trusted set of platforms known in advance.

While these simple schemes have value, they do not support the loose roaming itineraries

envisioned in many agent applications. Some more general-purpose techniques for

protecting an agent include the following:

• Partial Result Encapsulation,

• Mutual Itinerary Recording,

• Itinerary Recording with Replication and Voting,

• Execution Tracing,

• Environmental Key Generation,

• Computing with Encrypted Functions, and

• Obfuscated Code (Time Limited Blackbox).

4.2.1. Partial Result Encapsulation

One approach used to detect tampering by malicious hosts is to encapsulate the results of

an agent’s actions, at each platform visited, for subsequent verification, either when the

agent returns to the point of origin or possibly at intermediate points as well.

Encapsulation may be done for different purposes with different mechanisms, such as

providing confidentiality using encryption, or for integrity and accountability using digital

signature. The information encapsulated depends somewhat on the goals of the agent, but

typically include responses to inquiries made or transactions issued at the platform. In

general, there are three alternative ways to encapsulate partial results:

• Provide the agent with a means for encapsulating the information,

• Rely on the encapsulation capabilities of the agent platform, or

• Rely on a trusted third party to timestamp a digital fingerprint of the results.

While none of the alternatives prevents malicious behavior by the platform, they do allow

certain types of tampering to be detected. One difference with agent controlled

encapsulation is that it can be applied independently in the design of an appropriate agent

application, regardless of the capabilities of the agent platform or supporting

infrastructure.

Often the amount of information gathered by an agent is rather small in comparison to the

size of the encryption keys involved and the resulting ciphertext. A solution called sliding

encryption [29] allows small amounts of data to be encrypted and yield efficient sized

results. The scenario envisioned for use of sliding encryption is one in which the agent,
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using a public key it carries, encrypts the information as it is accumulated at each platform

visited. Later, when the agent returns to the point of origination, the information is

decrypted using the private key maintained there. While the purpose of sliding encryption

is confidentiality, an additional integrity measure could be applied as well, before

encryption occurs.

Another method for an agent to encapsulate result information is to use Partial Result

Authentication Codes (PRAC) [30], which are cryptographic checksums formed using

secret key cryptography (i.e., message authentication codes). This technique requires the

agent and its originator to maintain or incrementally generate a list of secret keys used in

the PRAC computation. Once a key is applied to encapsulate the information collected,

the agent destroys it before moving onto the next platform, guaranteeing forward

integrity. The forward integrity property ensures that if one of the servers visited is

malicious, the previous set of partial results remains valid. However, only the originator

can verify the results, since no other copies of the secret key remain. As an alternative,

public key cryptography and digital signatures can be used in lieu of secret key techniques.

One benefit is that authentication of the results can be made a publicly verifiable process at

any platform along the way, while maintaining forward integrity.

The PRAC technique has a number of limitations. The most serious occurs when a

malicious platform retains copies of the original keys or key generating functions of an

agent. If the agent revisits the platform or visits another platform conspiring with it, a

previous partial result entry or series of entries could be modified without the possibility of

detection. Since the PRAC is oriented towards integrity and not confidentiality, the

accumulated set of partial results can also be viewed by any platform visited, although this

is easily resolved by applying sliding key or other forms of encryption.

Rather than relying on the agent to encapsulate the information, each platform can be

required to encapsulate partial results along the way [27, 32]. The distinction is not only

one of where the encapsulation mechanisms are retained, either with the agent or at a

platform, but also one of responsibility and associated liabilities. While it appears rather

straightforward to change from one orientation to the other, the nuances can be

significant. For example, an agent, which used to sign partial results with the public of its

originator, is revised to have all platforms visited sign the results with their private key. If

the agent triggers a digital signature encapsulation via a platform programming interface,

the implementation must ensure that enough context is included (e.g., the time and query

issued) so that agent cannot induce the platform to sign arbitrary information.

Karjoth and his associates [38] devised a platform oriented technique for encapsulating

partial results, which reformulated and improved on the PRAC technique. The approach is

to construct a chain of encapsulated results that binds each result entry to all previous

entries and to the identity of the subsequent platform to be visited. Each platform digitally

signs its entry using its private key, and uses a secure hash function to link results and

identities within an entry. Besides forward integrity, the encapsulation technique also

provides confidentiality by encrypting each piece of accumulated information with the
21

public key of the originator of the agent. Moreover, the forward integrity is stronger than

that achieved with PRAC, since a platform is unable to modify its entry in the chain,

should it be revisited by the agent, or to collude with another platform to modify entries,

without invalidating the chain. A variant of this technique, which uses message

authentication codes in lieu of digital signatures, is also described.

Yee, who proposed the PRAC technique, noted that forward integrity could also be

achieved using a trusted third party that performs digital time-stamping. A digital

timestamp [31] allows one to verify that the contents of a file or document existed, as

such, at a particular point in time. Yee raises the concern that the granularity of the

timestamps may limit an agent’s maximum rate of travel, since it must reside at one

platform until the next time period. Another possible concern is the general availability of

a trusted time-stamping infrastructure.

4.2.2. Mutual Itinerary Recording

One interesting variation of Path Histories is a general scheme for allowing an agent's

itinerary to be recorded and tracked by another cooperating agent and vice versa [19], in a

mutually supportive arrangement. When moving between agent platforms, an agent

conveys the last platform, current platform, and next platform information to the

cooperating peer through an authenticated channel. The peer maintains a record of the

itinerary and takes appropriate action when inconsistencies are noted. Attention is paid so

that an agent avoids platforms already visited by its peer. The rationale behind this scheme

is founded on the assumption that only a few agent platforms are malicious, and even if an

agent encounters one, the platform is not likely to collaborate with another malicious

platform being visited by the peer. Therefore, by dividing up the operations of the

application between two agents, certain malicious behavior of an agent platform can be

detected.

The scheme can be generalized to more than two cooperating agents. For some

applications it is also possible for one of the agents to remain static at the home platform.

Because the path records are maintained at the agent level, this technique can be

incorporated into any appropriate application. Some drawbacks mentioned include the

cost of setting up the authenticated channel and the inability of the peer to determine

which of the two platforms is responsible if the agent is killed.
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4.2.3. Itinerary Recording with Replication and Voting

A faulty agent platform can behave similar to a malicious one. Therefore, applying fault

tolerant capabilities to this environment should help counter the effects of malicious

platforms. One such technique for ensuring that a mobile agent arrives safely at its

destination is through the use of replication and voting [32]. The idea is that rather than a

single copy of an agent performing a computation, multiple copies of the agent are used.

Although a malicious platform may corrupt a few copies of the agent, enough replicates

avoid the encounter to successfully complete the computation.

For each stage of the computation, the platform ensures that arriving agents are intact,

carrying valid credentials. Platforms involved in a particular stage of a computation are

expected to know the set of acceptable platforms for the previous stage. The platform

propagates onto the next stage only a subset of the replica agents it considers valid, based

on the inputs it receives. Underlying assumptions are that the majority of the platforms are

well behaved, and most agents arrived unscathed with equivalent results at each stage.

One of the protocols used in this technique requires forwarded agents to convey the

accumulated signature entries of all forwarding nodes onto each stage. The approach

taken is similar to Path Histories, but extended with fault tolerant capabilities. The

technique seems appropriate for specialized applications where agents can be duplicated

without problems, the task can be formulated as a multi-staged computation, and

survivability is a major concern. One obvious drawback is the additional resources

consumed by replicate agents.

4.2.4. Execution Tracing

Execution tracing [18] is a technique for detecting unauthorized modifications of an agent

through the faithful recording of the agent's behavior during its execution on each agent

platform. The technique requires each platform involved to create and retain a nonrepudiatable log or trace of the operations performed by the agent while resident there,

and to submit a cryptographic hash of the trace upon conclusion as a trace summary or

fingerprint. A trace is composed of a sequence of statement identifiers and platform

signature information. The signature of the platform is needed only for those instructions

that depend on interactions with the computational environment maintained by the

platform. For instructions that rely only on the values of internal variables, a signature is

not required and, therefore, is omitted. The technique also defines a secure protocol to

convey agents and associated security related information among the various parties

involved, which may include a trusted third party to retain the sequence of trace

summaries for the agent's entire itinerary. If any suspicious results occur, the appropriate

traces and trace summaries can be obtained and verified, and a malicious host identified.

The approach has a number of drawbacks, the most obvious being the size and number of

logs to be retained, and the fact that the detection process is triggered occasionally, based

on suspicious results or other factors. Other more subtle problems identified include the

lack of accommodating multi-threaded agents and dynamic optimization techniques. While
23

the goal of the technique is to protect an agent, the technique does afford some protection

for the agent platform, providing that the platform can also obtain the relevant trace

summaries and traces from the various parties involved.

4.2.5. Environmental Key Generation

Environmental Key Generation [33] describes a scheme for allowing an agent to take

predefined action when some environmental condition is true. The approach centers on

constructing agents in such a way that upon encountering an environmental condition

(e.g., string match in search), a key is generated, which is used to unlock some executable

code cryptographically. The environmental condition is hidden through either a one-way

hash or public key encryption of the environmental trigger. The technique ensures that a

platform or an observer of the agent cannot uncover the triggering message or response

action by directly reading the agent’s code.

The procedure is somewhat akin to the way in which passwords are maintained in modern

operating systems (e.g., the hash of a password is stored) and used to determine whether

login attempts are valid. One weakness of this approach is that a platform that completely

controls the agent could simply modify the agent to print out the executable code upon

receipt of the trigger, instead of executing it. Another drawback is that an agent platform

typically limits the capability of an agent to execute code created dynamically, since it is

considered an unsafe operation. An author of an agent can apply the technique, however,

in conjunction with other protection mechanisms for specific applications on appropriate

platforms.

4.2.6. Computing with Encrypted Functions

The goal of Computing with Encrypting Functions [21] is to determine a method whereby

mobile code can safely compute cryptographic primitives, such as a digital signature, even

though the code is executed in untrusted computing environments and operates

autonomously without interactions with the home platform. The approach is to have the

agent platform execute a program embodying an enciphered function without being able to

discern the original function; the approach requires differentiation between a function and

a program that implements the function.

For example, Alex has an algorithm to compute a function f. Barb has input x and wants

to compute f(x) for Alex, but he doesn't want Barb to learn anything about f. If f can be

encrypted in a way that results in another function E(f), then Alex can create a program

P(E(f)), which implements E(f), and send it to Barb, embedded within his agent. Barb then

runs the agent, which executes P(E(f)) on x, and returns the result to Alex who decrypts it

to obtain f(x). If f is a signature algorithm with an embedded key, the agent has an

effective means to sign information without the platform discovering the key. Similarly, if

it is an encryption algorithm containing an embedded key, the agent has an effective means

to encrypt information at the platform.
24

Although the idea is straightforward, the trick is to find appropriate encryption schemes

that can transform arbitrary functions as intended. Sander and Tschudin propose

investigating algebraic homomorphic encryption schemes as one possible candidate. Their

initial results look promising, and hopefully will form the basis for discovering other

classes of functions. The technique, while very powerful, does not prevent denial of

service, replay, experimental extraction, and other forms of attack against the agent.

4.2.7. Obfuscated Code

Hohl [34] gives a detailed overview of the threats stemming from an agent encountering a

malicious host as motivation for Blackbox Security. The strategy behind this technique is

simple -- scramble the code in such a way that no one is able to gain a complete

understanding of its function (i.e., specification and data), or to modify the resulting code

without detection. A serious problem with the general technique is that there is no known

algorithm or approach for providing Blackbox protection. However, the paper cites

Computing with Encrypted Functions as an example of an approach that falls into the

Blackbox category, with certain reservations concerning the limited range of input

specifications that apply.

A time limited variation of Blackbox protection is introduced as a reasonable alternative,

whereby the strength of the scrambling does not necessarily imply encryption as with the

unqualified one, but relies mainly on obfuscation algorithms. Since an agent can become

invalid before completing its computation, obfuscated code is suitable for applications that

do not convey information intended for long-lived concealment. The examples given for

pure obfuscation algorithms seem rather trivial and potentially ineffective. One promising

method relies on a trusted host to trigger the execution of an agent’s code segment. It is

not strictly speaking a pure obfuscation algorithm, however, since code is redistributed to

a trusted host, which is not part of the originally proposed scheme. The method does,

however, indicate a possible relationship between Environmentally Generated Keys and

Obfuscated Code techniques. One serious drawback to this technique is the lack of an

approach for quantifying the protection interval provided by the obfuscation algorithm,

thus making it difficult to apply in practice. Furthermore, no techniques are currently

known for establishing the lower bounds on the complexity for an attacker to reverse

engineer an agent’s code.

5. Mobile Agent Applications and Security Scenarios

Mobile agent technology is beginning to make its way out of research labs and is finding

its way into many commercial applications areas. The following section takes a look at

these application areas and discusses relevant security issues for typical scenarios.

5.1. Electronic Commerce

Mobile agent-based electronic commerce applications have been proposed and are being

developed for a number of diverse business areas, including contract negotiations, service
25

brokering, auctions, and stock trading [1, 4, 27, 41]. For example, manufacturers can

negotiate the delivery of goods and services with suppliers through their respective agents.

The agents may need to access the supplier's database, transfer money, and negotiate

terms of delivery, warranties, and service contracts. Mobile agents representing bidders

may meet on an auction house's platform to engage in blind, straight, or Dutch auctions,

each employing different strategies and having different financial constraints.

Figure 2 Degree of Mobility vs. Sensitivity of Agent

The level of security required for the application and the sensitivity of the mobile agent's

code and data directly influences the degree of mobility of a mobile agent. As shown in

Figure 2, as the sensitivity of the agent's task increases, the designer of the agent may

decrease the degree of mobility of the agent. The shaded vertical bar represents a cut-off

point for the designer to decide which agents will be static and which agents will be

mobile. This decision will be made based on the available security mechanisms,

performance requirements, sensitivity of the agent's code and data, maximum acceptable

risk, and the level of functionality required.

A mobile agent’s tasks could be divided between static and mobile agents so that the more

security the transaction required, the less mobile the agent would be. For example, a

"window shopping" mobile agent could visit vendor sites searching for the price and

availability of goods and services. When the mobile agent finds the goods and services that

meet its criteria, a static agent at the home platform or at a trusted platform could

complete the sale and sign the receipt with its private key. The loss of the window

shopping agent which has no authority to transfer money or sign receipts could be

Static Mobile

Mobility

Sensitivity
26

tolerated, but the loss or compromise of an agent that is authorized to sign documents or

transfer money could not. The vendor would be more likely to allow an agent to visit its

platform that would only need to read public information, and the mobile agent would

want any evidence used for non-repudiation to be stored and guarded on its home

platform or a trusted third party platform and not generated or stored on the vendor's

platform.

5.2. Network Management

Mobile agents are also well suited for network management applications such as remote

network management, software distribution, and adaptive response to network events.

Most of the current network management software is based on the Simple Network

Management Protocol (SNMP). The developers of SNMP designed it in the mid-1980s as

a temporary measure with known problems and inherent limitations until industry could

provide a better solution. Mobile agents allow for greater control of network devices and

aren't limited by whatever parameters the manufacturer of the device decides to make

available via SNMP. Mobile agents can also provide adaptive responses to network

events. Without mobile agents, all of the software required to support and respond to all

possible scenarios must be kept loaded and available on a device at all times. The network

manager must take the time to respond to each event, and interact with each device

individually. In contrast, mobile agents can be dispatched to respond to network events,

and only the software required for normal operation needs to be loaded onto the device.

Upgrading network software to add new functionality involves a significant roll-out effort

on behalf of network administrators. Installing new software, upgrading existing software,

or reconfiguring network hardware can be accomplished by simply dispatching mobile

agents to the appropriate machines [28].

Network management security policies are unlikely to allow code from outside the

organization onto the network. These policies are more likely to allow only in-house code

or code signed by a trusted vendor onto the network. Only authorized network

administrators would be allowed to introduce agents onto the network, strict access

control to mobile agent platforms would be in place, mobile agent design and development

would conform to mature software engineering principles and quality control methods,

and audit logs of security-related events would be maintained and analyzed.

Insider crime, where a disgruntled employee tries to launch malicious agents, seems to be

one of the greatest threats in an environment in which few or no outside agents are

allowed onto the network. Accountability mechanisms can be put in place to deter insiders

from launching malicious agents. These mechanisms, however, can only act as a deterrent

and cannot prevent this from actually occurring. This risk would seem to be equivalent to

an insider in a non-mobile agent computing environment introducing Trojan horses,

backdoors, or other malicious code, but in the case of mobile agents the damage could be

far greater. Mobile agents that are developed in-house or purchased from trusted vendors

are likely to undergo the same software engineering methods as their non-mobile

counterparts in order to assure the quality of code. Given the complexity of developing
27

secure and reliable code in non-mobile computing paradigms, it stands to reason that

design and programming errors will continue to create headaches for system

administrators and software developers of mobile agent systems. Mobile agents' inherent

autonomy, ability to clone themselves, and mobility adds more complexity to the design

and development process. Clearly, mobile agent design, development, and management

tools are still in their infancy and will be needed before any large-scale deployment of

agents will become feasible in an operational environment. Agent developers and

administrators could also benefit from better resource control mechanisms in mobile agent

platforms.

In contrast to the network management domain, active networking and the use of

intelligent packets represents the other end of the spectrum where packets from almost

anywhere can request computing and communication services from routers or other

networking elements on the Internet. Since the intelligent packets would be coming from

outside the security domain of the host platform, their code would require stronger

security mechanisms to establish identity and trust and would have fewer privileges than

the mobile code originating from within the security domain of the host platform.

5.3. Personal Digital Assistants (PDA)

Manufacturers of cell phones, personal organizers, car radios, and other consumer

electronic devices are introducing more and more functionality into their products and are

becoming the focus of agent developers. One can already take advantage of voice

recognition technology to speak to a car radio, have it map out directions, arrange to send

a fax, or consult a personal calendar to schedule an important meeting. These devices are

not on-line continuously and can benefit from a mobile agent's ability to operate

autonomously from the host that launched it. Agent developers often cite the example of a

user launching an agent to make travel, hotel, and dinner reservations by negotiating with

other agents, as an illustrative scenario for mobile agent technology [1, 4, 27].

Most agent users are unlikely to be developers of agents and will either download agents

from a reputable vendor or use agents already installed on their electronic devices. These

scenarios might be characterized by transactions where the user only sends out agents and

receives the same agent back, but hosts few, if any, agents from any other source.

Moreover, the human user’s digital assistant will likely have a smaller platform footprint

than commercial platforms and naturally offer fewer services. In this type of environment,

the primary security concerns are confidentiality, non-repudiation, mutual authentication.

A number of conventional security mechanisms are being applied to mobile agent systems.

The PKI serves as a foundation for mobile agent security services and makes

authentication, non-repudiation, and encryption readily available to agent developers and

users. Although they fall short of addressing all the security threats of the mobile agent

computing paradigm, there are a number of scenarios in which they may offer adequate

protection. For example, assigning sensitive tasks only to static agents and restricting

mobility between trusted parties adds an additional level of assurance that may
28

complement existing security mechanisms.

Although conventional encryption techniques can be applied to both the agent and its

messages, even if the messages from a PDA to another platform are encrypted,

eavesdroppers may be able to infer information about the user’s intentions based on the

destination of messages. For example, if the agent is sending messages or visiting

computer hardware vendors, a software vendor may begin sending unsolicited

advertisements for software or computer accessories. Since disconnected operation places

limits on the mobile agent's ability to use private keys stored on the human user's PDA,

and carrying its private key with it is not safe, time critical transactions could take place on

a third party trusted platform that is continuously available, unlike a personal digital

assistant.

Just as banks, credit card companies, and insurance companies offer a number of

complementary financial and legal services, similar services may be provided for agent

users. A human user may use a portfolio analysis and stock broker agent developed by a

financial institution for which the user is provided with a level of insurance similar to the

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the liability to fraud is limited in a

similar way as today's consumer credit cards. These institutions would be responsible for

the safety of the agent systems, and in return could differentiate themselves from their

competitors and generate new sources of income from these new agent-based services.

6. Security, Design, and Performance Issues

A number of advantages of using mobile code and mobile agent computing paradigms

have been proposed [4, 36, 42]. These advantages include: overcoming network latency,

reducing network load, executing asynchronously and autonomously, adapting

dynamically, operating in heterogeneous environments, and having robust and faulttolerant behavior.

One of the main obstacles to the widespread adoption of mobile agents is the legitimate

security concerns of system developers, network administrators, and information officers.

It has been argued that once the security issues have been resolved and a collection of

security mechanisms have been developed to counter the associated risks, then the users of

mobile agent technology will be free to develop useful and innovative solutions to existing

problems and find a wide array of application areas that will benefit from this technology.

Using this collection of security mechanisms to mitigate agent-to-agent, agent-to-platform,

and platform-to-agent security risks may, however, introduce performance constraints that

could dictate design decisions or negate the benefit of using mobile agents for certain

applications.

The selection of security mechanisms to employ for a particular application must,

therefore, be carefully considered during the design phase of an agent system development

cycle and not be added at the end as an additional feature. Security issues may determine

which agents are mobile and which agents remain stationary. Security issues may also
29

determine the functions that a mobile agent is designed to perform and those that it should

never perform. The following subsections briefly discuss the impact of various security

issues on the design and performance of mobile agent systems.

6.1. Overcoming Network Latency

Mobile agent solutions have been proposed for critical systems that need to respond to

changes in their environments in real time. An example of such an application is the use of

mobile agents to control robots employed in distributed manufacturing processes. Mobile

agents have been offered as a solution, since they can be dispatched from a central

controller to act locally and directly execute the controller's instructions. These distributed

manufacturing processes may allow different companies to use their special-purpose

machining tools and run proprietary data-analysis algorithms. Since the mobile agent

resides on the robot's host platform, the control process is not subject to network latencies

in control messages sent across slow, unreliable, or unpredictable networks. Although this

approach may resolve network latency problems it also raises serious network security

issues. For example, the mobile agent may want to keep trade secrets hidden from the

platform, while the platform wants to protect itself from unauthorized agents issuing

instructions to the machining tools or accessing data belonging to other agents.

Virtual machines and interpreters make mobility in a heterogeneous environment possible,

but an interpreted program typically runs slower than an equivalent program that uses

native code instructions. Making matters worse, the security mechanisms needed to

provide resource control, to protect the platform from the agent, and to conceal agent

data from the platform, may impose unacceptable performance costs that prevents the

agent from delivering the performance necessary for real-time applications. Thus, the

designer of the mobile agents used in distributed manufacturing applications must make

important tradeoffs between security and performance. Developers and researchers have

made increasing virtual machine and interpreter performance a top priority, and faster

hardware is continuously being introduced to the market, but the quest for better

performance will always remain.

Straßer and Schwem have contrasted the performance of mobile agent solutions with

Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) [37]. An RPC allows a procedure to be executed on a

remote server, transfer the control flow and some arguments, from the client to the server,

until the request is executed and the results are returned. The authors developed a

performance model for mobile agent systems in which agents can alternatively use RPC or

agent migration to interact with applications on other platforms. The authors concluded

that the selection of RPC or agent migration depended on several factors, including

network delay, throughput, migration overhead, number of messages, number of platforms

involved, and code caching. The authors did not evaluate the impact of adding security to

the performance model. The addition of encryption adds an additional overhead to both

the RPC and the mobile agent communication cost. In RPC, as the number of messages

increases, so does the overhead cost of encrypting them. In contrast, a mobile agent would

only need to be encrypted twice, once on the way to the host, and once on the way back.
30

In the cases of lightweight agents and frequent RPC message passing, lightweight mobile

agents may be cast in a better light as the overhead of encrypting a single lightweight

agent should be lower than the overhead of encrypting several RPC messages. As the

agent becomes more mobile and migrates more frequently, however, the agent migration

overhead related to security increases, since the agent is encrypted/decrypted at each hop.

6.2. Reducing Network Load

Mobile agents are well suited for search and analysis problems involving multiple

distributed resources that require specialized tasks that aren't supported by the data server

[27, 42]. A mobile agent-based search and data analysis approach can help decrease

network traffic resulting from the transfer of large amounts of data across a network for

local processing. Instead of transferring the data across the network, mobile agents can be

dispatched to the machine on which the data resides, essentially moving the computation

to the data, instead of moving the data to the computation, thus reducing the network load

for such a scenario. Clearly, transferring an agent that is smaller in size than the data to be

transferred reduces the network load. These benefits hold when the comparison is made

between encrypted lightweight mobile agents and the relatively larger data to be

transferred.

These benefits, however, cannot be realized unless the appropriate security mechanisms

are in place. The risks associated with allowing access to public data through well-defined

interfaces are relatively low, but the same cannot be said of allowing mobile code to

access to local resources. For example, any web site on the internet can submit a remote

query to portal search engines such as Yahoo! or get stock quotes from NASDAQ's web

site, although the practice is discouraged for commercial uses, without any security

mechanisms restricting their accesses. This is possible because the parameters of the query

are well defined and understood by the server, and the query poses a low risk to a secure

computing environment or to the information provider’s business operations. If someone

wanted to perform a proprietary analysis of the voluminous stock information stored on

the NASDAQ server, however, the system administrator would have good reason to be

reluctant to allow someone else's code to execute on their machines. Thus, the benefits of

using mobile agents to reduce the network load and augment the server functionality

depends on the availability of secure mobile agent frameworks before they can be realized.

6.3. Asynchronous Execution and Autonomy

A lot of attention is being focused on the use of mobile agents with mobile devices such as

cellular phones, personal digital assistants, automotive electronics, and military equipment

[4]. Their asynchronous execution and autonomy makes them well-suited for applications

that use fragile or expensive network connections. A mobile agent can be launched and

continue to operate even after the machine that launched it is no longer connected to the

network.

Although a mobile agent may have autonomy of movement and is not bound to the host

from where it began its execution, it may rely on that host for security services. For
31

example, a mobile agent may be engaged in electronic commerce and be required to

digitally sign documents related to a particular transaction. Mobile agents cannot safely

carry their private key with them, and must rely on their home platform or another trusted

platform to provide this service. If the mobile agent is engaged in a transaction that

requires a digital signature to be provided, it must be able to communicate with its home

platform or another trusted platform. For example, if the agent is unable to provide a

digitally signed auction bid, the other agents cannot be expected to wait for the agent to

resolve its differences with the electronic auction house before they make their next bids.

In this example, although the agent has autonomy of movement, its reliance on the home

platform for security services limits the types of tasks it can perform autonomously.

Mobile agents typically load their class files dynamically, as needed, from their home

platform. The ability to dynamically load classes also has security implications. If the home

platform is not available, these class files may be provided by the local host or must be

found and transferred from a remote trusted host. Class loading from a remote platform or

the local host platform raises a number of security issues. The class files may have been

modified in such a way as to alter the functionality of the agent or even to allow for

eavesdropping of the agent’s transactions. Class versioning problems may also yield

unexpected results which the mobile agent may not be able to repudiate.

6.4. Adapting Dynamically

Mobile agents have the ability to sense their execution environment and autonomously

react to changes [4]. For example, if the computational load of the host platform is too

high and the host's performance doesn't meet the agent's service expectations, the agent

can move to another machine that can better satisfy its computational needs. Mobile

agents can distribute themselves among the hosts in the network in such a way as to

maintain the optimal configuration for solving a particular problem. As long as the agents

move to hosts within the same security domain and each security domain places the agents

under the same security policy, granting or denying the same privileges it had on its

previous platform, security concerns do not adversely affect mobile agents' ability to

dynamically adapt to the execution environment.

If the mobile agents begin moving outside their existing security domain and become

subject to new security policies, then the way in which they adapt will be influenced, and

potentially restricted, by the security policies of other platforms. Mobile agent platforms

must, therefore, be able to communicate their security policies to mobile agents, and the

mobile agents must be able to evaluate different security policies in addition to the

available resources before deciding on their next destination. Communicating, negotiating,

and managing mobile agent security policies also introduces new security administration

costs for the mobile agent platform.

6.5. Operating in Heterogeneous Environments

Since mobile agents are generally computer- and transport-layer-independent, and

dependent only on their execution environment, they offer an attractive approach for
32

heterogeneous system integration. Mobile agents' ability to operate in heterogeneous

computing environments is made possible by virtual machines or interpreters on the host

platform. The benefits of heterogeneity, however, introduce several new security

concerns. The current implementations of virtual machines or interpreters that make

heterogeneous computing environments possible, however, do not provide adequate

support for resource control. For example, Java currently provides no way for the host to

limit the processor and memory resources allocated to a given object or thread and is,

therefore, susceptible to denial of service attacks. A related issue is the ability of the agent

to allocate resources external to the program, for example, by opening files and sockets,

and creating windows. In addition, the current Java VM offers no protection from

references to an object's public methods. A Java object’s public methods and the data to

which they may provide access are available to any other object that has a reference to

them. There is currently no way for an agent to directly monitor or control which agents

are accessing its methods.

6.6. Robust and Fault-Tolerant Behavior

The ability of mobile agents to react dynamically to unfavorable situations and events

makes it easier to build robust and fault-tolerant distributed systems. For example, if a

host is being shut down, all agents executing on that machine are warned, whenever

possible, and given time to dispatch and continue their operation on another host in the

network.

The ability of the mobile agents to move from one platform to another in a heterogeneous

environment has been made possible by the use of virtual machines and interpreters.

Virtual machines and interpreters, however, can offer only limited support for preservation

and resumption of the execution state in heterogeneous environments, because of differing

representations in the underlying hardware. For example, although a number of research

efforts are underway to address this issue, the full execution state of an object cannot

currently be retrieved in Java2. Information such as the status of the program counter and

frame stack is currently off limits for Java programs.

Conventional fault-recovery and check-pointing techniques are challenged even further in

the mobile agent computing paradigm. Even though an arsenal of techniques exist to

provide security and fault-tolerance, the designer must be careful in selecting which

mechanisms to use and how they impact the overall system performance and functionality.

For example, check-pointing before and after an agent's arrival, and upon completion of

certain transactions or events may be necessary to ensure for acceptable fault-recovery.

With each check-pointing procedure and non-repudiation mechanism invoked, however,

more overhead is introduced. The fault-recovery techniques may also involve more than

one machine, further complicating the recovery.

Although mobile agents possess a great deal of autonomy and perform well in

 

2

 A number of research projects, such as Nomads at the University of West Florida, are using modified

Java Virtual Machines to capture the frame stack.
33

disconnected operations, the failure of the home platform or other platforms that the

agents rely on to provide security services can seriously reduce their intended

functionality. Even though a mobile agent can become more fault-tolerant by moving to

another machine, the mobile agent's reliance on the safe operation of a safe home or

trusted platform places restrictions on its functionality. Designers of mobile agent

platforms are also faced with tradeoffs between security and fault-tolerance. For example,

in order to address the security risks involved in "multi-hop" agent mobility, some agent

architectures have been built on centralized client-server models requiring agents to return

to a central server before moving on to another host machine [28]. Clearly, addressing the

security risks in this manner renders all the mobile agents vulnerable to a failure of the

central server and raises scalability issues.

7. Areas for Future Research

The area of mobile agent security is still in a somewhat immature state. The traditional

host orientation toward security persists, and the focus of protection mechanisms within

the mobile agent paradigm remains on protecting the agent platform. However, emphasis

is moving toward developing techniques that are directed towards protecting the agent, a

much more difficult problem. Fortunately, there are a number of applications for agents

where conventional and recently introduced security techniques should prove adequate,

until further progress can be made.

The next wave of security improvements for agent systems is likely to emerge from the

present baseline of protection techniques, either through incremental refinements that

reduce processing and storage overhead or simplify the use of the mechanism, or clever

combination of complementary mechanisms to form a more effective composite protection

scheme. Other peripheral topics currently neglected by researchers are also potential

candidates. From the threats and countermeasures reviewed earlier and in the ensuing

discussion, there appears to be an opportunity for research along the following lines:

• Agent Security Framework,

• Security Design Tools,

• PKI Privilege Management Extensions, and

• Anonymity.

7.1. Agent Security Framework

In the past, as teams of individuals have developed agent systems, pragmatics prevailed

and emphasis was placed on functionality over security. While some agent system

implementations incorporate appropriate security techniques, often little regard is given to

interoperability among agent systems. What is needed is an overall framework that

integrates compatible techniques into an effective security model and provides an umbrella

under which interoperability can exist.
34

The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents’ (FIPA) '97 and '98 standards and Object

Management Group’s MASIF standards both fall short in providing the desired

framework. The FIPA work is focused mainly on standardizing the agent communication

language used among cooperating agents. Many of the details regarding the architecture

of the agent platform require significant work before any substantive progress can be made

on security. The MASIF standards on the other hand do make a clear and definitive

statement on security, relying on the CORBA security services architecture.

Unfortunately, although the CORBA model adequately addresses security services for an

agent platform, it largely ignores any independent security services needed by an agent.

7.2. Mobile Agent Security Design Tools

Mobile agent application developers currently face a number of obstacles before they can

efficiently design and develop large-scale mobile agent systems. These obstacles include:

the lack of advanced development and modeling tools, the lack of mature agent standards,

and the difficulty in optimizing performance under varying computational and

communication loads. The limitations of agent and agent platform security mechanisms

must also be overcome before agent developers can realize the full benefits of mobile

agent technology. The selection of security mechanisms has a direct impact on agent

migration, autonomy, disconnected operation, network latency, performance, and agent

messaging. Mobile agent security design tools can help agent system developers determine

the effects of employing various security mechanisms and make better decisions about

functionality and performance tradeoffs.

7.3. PKI Privilege Management Extensions

Attribute certificates have long been discussed as a means of extending a public key

infrastructure to allow users or other issuers to control how their authority is delegated to

software that operates on their behalf. The idea is that individuals, whose identity is

established through an existing PKI (e.g., PGP, MISSI, PEM, etc.), could delegate their

authority by using their private key to sign a specially designed certificate, an attribute

certificate. An attribute certificate contains no key material, such as the public key for an

entity, but incorporates a message digest of the software along with the privilege and

policy delegations. Both ANSI X9 and the IETF have made some initial attempts at

standardization in this area, however, the topic has not received much attention to date

from the agent community.

The main area needing resolution is how to express privilege and policy within the

certificate. The syntax must be able to be processed by a machine, rich enough to capture

real-world privileges and policy, and simple enough for people to use. While privilege can

be represented easily using a simple “privilege = attribute set” notation often employed in

present day agent systems, policy is more difficult, since it must express the protection the

agent must receive in conducting its activities.
35

7.4. Anonymity

This topic refers to protection mechanisms for preserving the anonymity of a user on

whose behalf an agent operates. Most of the work on this topic has been done in the

context of messaging systems. Anonymity of not only an initiating agent, but also of any

recipient agent or intermediaries may apply.

8. Summary

A wide variety of techniques for implementing security in agent systems is available. Not

all are compatible with one another, nor are they all suitable for most applications. Many

of these techniques must be implemented within the framework of the agent system, while

a number of them can be applied independently within the context of the application.

While elementary security techniques should prove adequate for a number of agent-based

applications, many applications are expected to require a more comprehensive set of

mechanisms. Moreover, to meet the needs of a specific application, a flexible framework

must exist in which a subset of mechanisms can be selected and applied. The trick, of

course, is to select a comprehensive baseline of countermeasures which meets the

philosophy of protection guiding the design of the agent system, fulfills the needs of most

applications, includes compatible mechanisms, and can be extended to include other

advanced mechanisms that may be invented. Clearly, this is a period where establishing

such a baseline requires more experimentation and experience with alternative design

choices, including those involving tradeoffs in performance, scalability, and compatibility.

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<URL: http://java.sun.cm/docs/white/langenv/>

[4] Danny Lange and Mitsuru Oshima, Programming and Deploying Java Mobile

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36

[7] "Mobile Agent System Interoperability Facilities Specification," Object

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