Mecanismo para evitar ataques por confabulación basados en code passing

Los agentes móviles son entidades software formadas por código, datos, itinerario y estado, que pueden migrar de host en host autónomamente ejecutando su código. A pesar de sus ventajas, los aspectos de seguridad restringen enormemente el uso de código móvil. La protección del agente ante ataques de hosts maliciosos, es el problema de seguridad más difícil de resolver en los sistemas de agentes móviles. En particular, los ataques por confabulación han sido poco estudiados en la literatura. Este paper presenta un mecanismo de protección ante ataques por confabulación basados en code passing. Nuestra propuesta es un Multi-Code Agent que contiene diferentes variantes del código para cada host. Una Trusted Third Party es la responsable de proporcionar la información para extraer cada variante, y de tomar referencias temporales que se usarán para veri car la coherencia temporal

Architectural components for the efficient design of mobile agent systems

Over the past eighteen months, there has been a renewed interest in mobile agent technology due to the continued exponential growth of Internet applications, the establishment of open standards for these applications, as well as the semantic web developments. However, the lack of a standardised programming model addressing all aspects of mobile agent systems prevents widespread deployment of the potentially useful technology. The architectural requirements dealing with all aspects of a mobile agent system are not clearly stipulated. As a result, the commercially available mobile agent systems and mobile agent tool kits address different mobile agent issues, and little reuse of available technologies and architectures takes place. The purpose of this paper is to describe an architectural model that identifies the components representing the essential aspects of a mobile agent system. Due to the intensive nature of development, implementation and testing of this model, we describe preliminary work. However, in the meanwhile, there are benefits associated with this preliminary model, namely that it provides a clear understanding of the architectural issues of mobile agent computing, giving novice researchers and practitioners who enters the field for the first time a foundation for making sensible decisions when researching, designing and developing mobile agents. The model is also significant in that it provides a benchmark for researchers and developers to measure the capabilities of mobile agents created by commercially available tool kits.Mobile Agent Systems, Software architecture modelSchool of Computin

When Security meets Software Engineering: A case of modelling secure information systems

Although security is a crucial issue for information systems, traditionally, it is considered after the definition of the system. This approach often leads to problems, which most of the times translate into security vulnerabilities. From the viewpoint of the traditional security paradigm, it should be possible to eliminate such problems through better integration of security and software engineering. This paper firstly argues for the need to develop a methodology that considers security as an integral part of the whole system development process, and secondly it contributes to the current state of the art by proposing an approach that considers security concerns as an integral part of the entire system development process and by relating this approach with existing work. The different stages of the approach are described with the aid of a real-life case study; a health and social care information system

Secure Tropos: A Security-Oriented Extension of the Tropos methodology

Although security plays an important role in the development of multiagent systems, a careful analysis of software development processes shows that the definition of security requirements is, usually, considered after the design of the system. One of the reasons is the fact that agent oriented software engineering methodologies have not integrated security concerns throughout their developing stages. The integration of security concerns during the whole range of the development stages can help towards the development of more secure multiagent systems. In this paper we introduce extensions to the Tropos methodology to enable it to model security concerns throughout the whole development process. A description of the new concepts and modelling activities is given along with a discussion on how these concepts and modelling activities are integrated to the current stages of Tropos. A real life case study from the health and social care sector is used to illustrate the approach

A framework for the protection of mobile agents against malicious hosts

The mobility attribute of a mobile agent implies deployment thereof in untrustworthy environments, which introduces malicious host threats. The research question deals with how a security framework could be constructed to address the mentioned threats without introducing high costs or restraining the mobile agent's autonomy or performance. Available literature have been studied, analysed and discussed. The salient characteristics as well as the drawbacks of current solutions were isolated. Through this knowledge a dynamic mobile agent security framework was defined. The framework is based on the definition of multiple security levels, depending on type of deployment environment and type of application. A prototype was constructed and tested and it was found to be lightweight and efficient, giving developers insight into possible security threats as well as tools for maximum protection against malicious hosts. The framework outperformed other frameworks / models as it provides dynamic solutions without burdening a system with unnecessary security gadgets and hence paying for it in system cost and performanceComputingD.Phil

MARIAN: A hybrid, metric-driven, agent-based routing protocol for multihop ad-hoc networks

Recent advances in technology provided the ground for highly dynamic, mobile, infrastructure-less networks, namely, ad-hoc networks. Despite their enormous benefits, the full potential cannot be reached unless certain issues are resolved. These mainly involve routing, as the lack of an infrastructure imposes a heavy burden on mobile devices that must maintain location information and route data packets in a multi-hop fashion. Specifically, typical adhoc routing devices, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), are limited in respect to the available throughput, life-time, and performance, that these may provide, as routing elements. Thus, there is a need for metric-driven ad-hoc routing, that is, devices should be utilised for routing according to their fitness, as different device types significantly vary in terms of routing fitness. In addition, a concrete agent-based approach can provide a set of advantages over a non-agent-based one, which includes: better design practice; and automatic reconfigurability.This research work aims to investigate the applicability of stationary and mobile agent technology in multi-hop ad-hoc routing. Specifically, this research proposes a novel hybrid, metric-driven, agent-based routing protocol for multi-hop ad-hoc networks that will enhance current routing schemes. The novelties that are expected to be achieved include: maximum network performance, increased scalability, dynamic adaptation, Quality of Service (QoS), energy conservation, reconfigurability, and security. The underlying idea is based on the fact that stationary and mobile agents can be ideal candidates for such dynamic environments due to their advanced characteristics, and thus offer state of the art support in terms of organising the otherwise disoriented network into an efficient and flexible hierarchical structure, classifying the routing fitness of participating devices, and therefore allow intelligent routing decisions to be taken on that basis

MARIAN: A hybrid, metric-driven, agent-based routing protocol for multihop ad-hoc networks

Recent advances in technology provided the ground for highly dynamic, mobile, infrastructure-less networks, namely, ad-hoc networks. Despite their enormous benefits, the full potential cannot be reached unless certain issues are resolved. These mainly involve routing, as the lack of an infrastructure imposes a heavy burden on mobile devices that must maintain location information and route data packets in a multi-hop fashion. Specifically, typical adhoc routing devices, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), are limited in respect to the available throughput, life-time, and performance, that these may provide, as routing elements. Thus, there is a need for metric-driven ad-hoc routing, that is, devices should be utilised for routing according to their fitness, as different device types significantly vary in terms of routing fitness. In addition, a concrete agent-based approach can provide a set of advantages over a non-agent-based one, which includes: better design practice; and automatic reconfigurability.This research work aims to investigate the applicability of stationary and mobile agent technology in multi-hop ad-hoc routing. Specifically, this research proposes a novel hybrid, metric-driven, agent-based routing protocol for multi-hop ad-hoc networks that will enhance current routing schemes. The novelties that are expected to be achieved include: maximum network performance, increased scalability, dynamic adaptation, Quality of Service (QoS), energy conservation, reconfigurability, and security. The underlying idea is based on the fact that stationary and mobile agents can be ideal candidates for such dynamic environments due to their advanced characteristics, and thus offer state of the art support in terms of organising the otherwise disoriented network into an efficient and flexible hierarchical structure, classifying the routing fitness of participating devices, and therefore allow intelligent routing decisions to be taken on that basis