Security for Mobile Agents : Issues and Challenges

Mobile Agent (MA) technology raises significant security concerns and requires a thorough security framework with a wide range of strategies and mechanisms for the protection of both agent platform and mobile agents against possibly malicious reciprocal behavior. The security infrastructure should have the ability to flexibly and dynamically offer different solutions to achieve different qualities of security service depending on application requirements. The chapter presents the security threats that typically arise in MA applications and describes the proposed currently available countermeasures to protect both nodes and mobile agents. In addition, the chapter surveys the state-of-the-art research activities about integrated security supports in MA systems and identifies open research issues and on-going research work. 1 Security: a Missing Link for Mobile Agents Acceptance The convergence of the Internet with wireless communications have raised new challenges in the support of user and terminal mobility, in facing heterogeneity, and in adapting to the dynamic changes in the network infrastructure [1]. The new scenario seems a suitable application area for computing paradigms that exploit the notion of code mobility, defined as the capability to dynamically change the binding between software components and their location of execution [2]. As mobile networks gain widespread acceptance and ubiquitous environments start to emerge, the ability to change the locations where applications can execute becomes an increasingly important requirement. For example, we can think to heterogeneous and resource-limited portable devices that can benefit from the possibility to download on-demand device-specific software components and discard them when no longer needed.