SecMiLiA: An Approach in the Agent Protection

Abstract

Agent-based computing represents a promising paradigm for distributed computing. Unfortunately the lack of security is hindering the application of this paradigm in real world applications. The protection of malicious hosts is considered the most difficult security problem to solve in mobile agent systems. In this paper we provide a mechanism that aims to solve the problem of the malicious hosts. The core of our work is a new agent migration protocol based on the use of tamper resistant cryptographic hardware. Concretely, we base our work on the use of the Trusted Computing technology. Our protocol has been validated using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) model checking tool. As a result we have a library built on JADE that implements the secure migration for agents named Secure Migration Library for Agents (SecMiLiA). This library provides a friendly use of the Trusted Computing technology for agent based system developers.