13,559 research outputs found

    A trustworthy mobile agent infrastructure for network management

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    Despite several advantages inherent in mobile-agent-based approaches to network management as compared to traditional SNMP-based approaches, industry is reluctant to adopt the mobile agent paradigm as a replacement for the existing manager-agent model; the management community requires an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary, use of mobile agents. Furthermore, security for distributed management is a major concern; agent-based management systems inherit the security risks of mobile agents. We have developed a Java-based mobile agent infrastructure for network management that enables the safe integration of mobile agents with the SNMP protocol. The security of the system has been evaluated under agent to agent-platform and agent to agent attacks and has proved trustworthy in the performance of network management tasks

    Agent fabrication and its implementation for agent-based electronic commerce

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    In the last decade, agent-based e-commerce has emerged as a potential role for the next generation of e-commerce. How to create agents for e-commerce applications has become a serious consideration in this field. This paper proposes a new scheme named agent fabrication and elaborates its implementation in multi-agent systems based on the SAFER (Secure Agent Fabrication, Evolution & Roaming) architecture. First, a conceptual structure is proposed for software agents carrying out e-commerce activities. Furthermore, agent module suitcase is defined to facilitate agent fabrication. With these definitions and facilities in the SAFER architecture, the formalities of agent fabrication are elaborated. In order to enhance the security of agent-based e-commerce, an infrastructure of agent authorization and authentication is integrated in agent fabrication. Our implementation and prototype applications show that the proposed agent fabrication scheme brings forth a potential solution for creating agents in agent-based e-commerce applications

    Secure agent data integrity shield

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    In the rapidly expanding field of E-Commerce, mobile agent is the emerging technology that addresses the requirement of intelligent filtering/processing of information. This paper will address the area of mobile agent data integrity protection. We propose the use of Secure Agent Data Integrity Shield (SADIS) as a scheme that protects the integrity of data collected during agent roaming. With the use of a key seed negotiation protocol and integrity protection protocol, SADIS protects the secrecy as well as the integrity of agent data. Any illegal data modification, deletion, or insertion can be detected either by the subsequent host or the agent butler. Most important of all, the identity of each malicious host can be established. To evaluate the feasibility of our design, a prototype has been developed using Java. The result of benchmarking shows improvement both in terms of data and time efficiency

    A Flexible and Secure Deployment Framework for Distributed Applications

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    This paper describes an implemented system which is designed to support the deployment of applications offering distributed services, comprising a number of distributed components. This is achieved by creating high level placement and topology descriptions which drive tools that deploy applications consisting of components running on multiple hosts. The system addresses issues of heterogeneity by providing abstractions over host-specific attributes yielding a homogeneous run-time environment into which components may be deployed. The run-time environments provide secure binding mechanisms that permit deployed components to bind to stored data and services on the hosts on which they are running.Comment: 2nd International Working Conference on Component Deployment (CD 2004), Edinburgh, Scotlan

    A Factory-based Approach to Support E-commerce Agent Fabrication

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    With the development of Internet computing and software agent technologies, agent-based e-commerce is emerging. How to create agents for e-commerce applications has become an important issue along the way to success. We propose a factory-based approach to support agent fabrication in e-commerce and elaborate a design based on the SAFER (Secure Agent Fabrication, Evolution & Roaming) framework. The details of agent fabrication, modular agent structure, agent life cycle, as well as advantages of agent fabrication are presented. Product-brokering agent is employed as a practical agent type to demonstrate our design and Java-based implementation

    SAFE: Secure-Roaming Agents for E-commerce

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    The development of the Internet has made a powerful impact on the concept of commerce. E-commerce, a new way to conduct business, is gaining more and more popularity. Despite its rapid growth, there are limitations that hinder the expansion of e-commerce. The primary concern for most people when talking about on-line shopping is security. Due to the open nature of the Internet, personal financial details necessary for on-line shopping can be stolen if sufficient security mechanism is not put in place. How to provide the necessary assurance of security to consumers remains a question mark despite various past efforts. Another concern is the lack of intelligence. The Internet is an ocean of information depository. It is rich in content but lacks the necessary intelligent tools to help one locate the correct piece of information. Intelligent agent, a piece of software that can act on behalf of its owner intelligently, is designed to fill this gap. However, no matter how intelligent an agent is, if it remains on its owner’s machine and does not have any roaming capability, its functionality is limited. With the roaming capability, more security concerns arise. In response to these concerns, SAFE, Secure roaming Agent For E-commerce, is designed to provide secure roaming capability to intelligent agents

    Migration control for mobile agents based on passport and visa

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    Research on mobile agents has attracted much attention as this paradigm has demonstrated great potential for the next-generation e-commerce. Proper solutions to security-related problems become key factors in the successful deployment of mobile agents in e-commerce systems. We propose the use of passport and visa (P/V) for securing mobile agent migration across communities based on the SAFER e-commerce framework. P/V not only serves as up-to-date digital credentials for agent-host authentication, but also provides effective security mechanisms for online communities to control mobile agent migration. Protection for mobile agents, network hosts, and online communities is enhanced using P/V. We discuss the design issues in details and evaluate the implementation of the proposed system
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