Certificates for mobile code security

ABSTRACT

The problem of protecting mobile code from malicious hosts is an important security issue, for which many solutions have been proposed. We describe a method to adapt an existing technique, execution tracing, to enhance its flexibility in deployment for a large scale mobile agent system. This is achieved through the introduction of a trusted third party, the verification server, which undertakes the verification of execution traces on behalf of the platform launching the agent. The server constructs a certificate that testifies to the capability of a particular host platform to undertake the correct execution of a mobile agent. In this sense, the server assumes a role analogous of a Certificate Authority (CA) in a PKI. We briefly discuss the issues associated with such a framework.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.6 Security and Protection

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.1 PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES
      C.1.3 Other Architecture Styles
          Subjects: Cellular architecture (e.g., mobile)

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
        I.2.11 Distributed Artificial Intelligence
            Subjects: Intelligent agents

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Security, Theory

Keywords:
mobile agent certificates, mobile agent security, mobile agent security framework