Security threats to mobile agents

Abstract

Mobile Agent is a software abstraction (a process) executing in self-governing manner and capable of suspending its execution on a host computer, moving from one agent-enabled host to another and continuing its execution on the destination node. This way mobile agent can migrate in a loosely coupled distributed environment across different nodes with its data intact to perform intended task. As the goal achievement is done by migrating mobile agents into networked computers it increasing the security risks. The paper identifies the application of mobile agents along with introduced threats to the system and generic security issues. In this paper we also propose work to implement the security layer for mobile agents for their authentication and authorization there by fulfilling security objectives.