Security Issues in Mobile Code Systems

In mobile code systems, programs or processes travel from host to host in order to accomplish their goals. Such systems violate some of the assumptions that underlie most existing computer security implementations. In order to make these new systems secure, we will have to deal with a number of issues that previous systems have been able to ignore or sidestep. This paper surveys the assumptions that mobile code systems violate (including the identification of programs with persons, and other assumptions that follow from that), the new security issues that arise, and some of the ways that these issues will be addressed.

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