Security for Mobile Agents

In view of the proliferation and expansion of wide-area open networks such as the intranets and extra-nets, agent technology is attracting greater attention. However, as yet there is well-established and widely used method of developing safe and secure agent systems. In this paper, we propose a methodology that supports the step-by-step development of mobile agent systems while ensuring consideration of security issues. This approach results in a robust infrastructure for practical system development, and by supporting calculation of various costs allows efficiency and security tradeoffs to be objectively evaluated.