Concepts and architecture of a security-centric mobile agent server

Mobile software agents are software components that are able to move in a network. They are often considered as an attractive technology in electronic commerce applications. Although security concerns prevail. We describe the architecture and concepts of the SeMoA server-a runtime environment for Java-based mobile agents. Its architecture has a focus on security and easy extendability, and offers a framework for transparent content inspection of agents by means of filters. We implemented filters that handle agent signing and authentication as well as selective encryption of agent contents. Filters are applied transparently such that agents need not be aware of the security services provided by the server.