A review of security implications and possible solutions for mobile agents in e-commerce

The term e-commerce (or e-business) is used to refer business activities over the internet. Mobile agents (MA) are software entities that can migrate across the network (hence mobile) representing users in various tasks (hence agents). There are many practical benefits of using MA technology especially for e-commerce applications. However, it has also made systems vulnerable to attacks. The trustworthiness of mobile agents is crucial to the success of its application in e-business. To be trustworthy, a mobile agent must protect its gathered data against adversaries encountered while traversing the Internet. This paper focuses on examining the conditions under which vulnerabilities are created and looks at the security technology that can be used for deploying MA for heterogeneous environments in general and MA for ecommerce in particular.