A Secure Protocol Based on a Sedentary Agent for Mobile Agent Environments

Abstract

The main challenge when deploying mobile agent environments pertains to security issues concerning mobile agents and their executive platform. This paper proposes a secure protocol which protects mobile agents against attacks from malicious hosts in these environments. Protection is based on the perfect cooperation of a sedentary agent running inside a trusted third host. Results show that the protocol detects several attacks, such as denial of service, incorrect execution and re-execution of the mobile agent code. Results also indicate that the traffic generated and run time are barely affected.