Patent ID: 7975137

Claim:
A method of securely extending an initial path of a mobile agent from a first server within a network system having a plurality of servers, at least an initial number of which the mobile agent must pass according to a pre-given chronology which defines the initial path of the mobile agent, the method comprising: extending the initial path of the mobile agent from an initiator server by a second number of servers of the plurality of servers, when the initiator server is reached by the mobile agent in the pre-given chronology, wherein the second number of servers includes the server following the initiator server according to the initial path thereby defining an extension of the initial path; jointly encrypting within a nested structure the extension of the initial path and data intended for any one of the second number of servers; giving the nested structure to the mobile agent to take with it, the nested structure being built up of a number of nested terms corresponding to the second number of servers, each nested term being decryptable by exactly one server of the second number of servers in such a manner that each server of the second number of servers gets access only to the data intended for it and to a section of the extended path, when being reached by the mobile agent in the defined chronology of the extension, the nested structure further including a signature of the initiator server of the extension.