A survey of security issue in multi-agent systems

Multi-agent systems have attracted the attention of researchers because of agents' automatic, pro-active, and dynamic problem solving behaviors. Consequently, there has been a rapid development in agent technology which has enabled us to provide or receive useful and convenient services in a variety of areas such as banking, transportation, e-business, and healthcare. In many of these services, it is, however, necessary that security is guaranteed. Unless we guarantee the security services based on agent-based systems, these services will face significant deployment problems. In this paper, we survey existing work related to security in multi-agent systems, especially focused on access control and trust/reputation, and then present our analyses. We also present existing problems and discuss future research challenges. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V 2011

Metodología para el Desarrollo Automatizado de Aplicaciones Seguras Basadas en Agentes Móviles

En este trabajo presentamos una metodología para el diseño de aplicaciones basadas en agentes móviles seguros, y unas herramientas para aplicar esta metodología. Los recientes avances en el campo de la seguridad de los agentes móviles pueden desbloquear el uso de esta tecnología, pero falta aún superar la complejidad que suponen al programador de las aplicaciones. La metodología propuesta, y el uso de nuestras herramientas, permiten agilizar el proceso de diseño de arquitecturas criptográficas, y de los agentes que las utilizan. La implementación presentada es muy flexible, y permite utilizarse con cualquier plataforma de agentes que siga los estándares de IEEE-FIPA y que permita los esquemas de protección conducidos por agente.En aquest treball presentem una metodologia per al disseny d'aplicacions basades en agents mòbils segurs, i unes eines per aplicar aquesta metodologia. Els recents avenços en el camp de la seguretat dels agents mòbils poden desbloquejar l'ús d'aquesta tecnologia, però falta encara superar la complexitat que suposen el programador de les aplicacions. la metodologia proposada i l'ús de les nostres eines, permeten agilitzar el procés de disseny d'arquitectures criptogràfiques, i dels agents que les utilitzen. la implementació presentada és molt flexible, i permet la seva utilització amb qualsevol plataforma d'agents que segueixi els estàndards de IEEE-FIPA i que permeti els esquemes de protecció conduïts per agent.In this work a methodology for the design of applications based on secure mobile agents is presented, and several tools for applying this methodology

(So) Big Data and the transformation of the city

The exponential increase in the availability of large-scale mobility data has fueled the vision of smart cities that will transform our lives. The truth is that we have just scratched the surface of the research challenges that should be tackled in order to make this vision a reality. Consequently, there is an increasing interest among different research communities (ranging from civil engineering to computer science) and industrial stakeholders in building knowledge discovery pipelines over such data sources. At the same time, this widespread data availability also raises privacy issues that must be considered by both industrial and academic stakeholders. In this paper, we provide a wide perspective on the role that big data have in reshaping cities. The paper covers the main aspects of urban data analytics, focusing on privacy issues, algorithms, applications and services, and georeferenced data from social media. In discussing these aspects, we leverage, as concrete examples and case studies of urban data science tools, the results obtained in the “City of Citizens” thematic area of the Horizon 2020 SoBigData initiative, which includes a virtual research environment with mobility datasets and urban analytics methods developed by several institutions around Europe. We conclude the paper outlining the main research challenges that urban data science has yet to address in order to help make the smart city vision a reality

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

Service-oriented mobility of java code in web services-based architectures

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologias da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia InformáticaSoftware mobility consists of providing software components, the ability to migrate to a remote host with the purpose of interacting locally. In other words, this technology enables computations to be transferred from the current machine to a remote one. This powerful enhancement embodied in a traditional network fairly raises security concerns. For now, we believe that software mobility paradigm is confined to environments with bases of trust such as local area networks or middleware layers where security issues can be better controlled. Service-oriented computations reorganize the network architecture in the form of services, where components are more easily integrated, modified and removed. They have the ability to cooperate between them regardless the programming language used in their development. In addition, service-oriented computing is a widely accepted technology for the implementation of distributed applications, namely middleware. The work developed in this thesis consists of instantiating a model which combines software mobility and service-oriented paradigms as proposed by Paulino [20]. In this model, migrating sessions take advantage of the resources of a service-oriented network, creating thus an environment where the migration is modeled in terms of services instead of network nodes abstractions. In the instantiated model, we aim to apply the migration of Java programs in a context of a service-oriented architecture developed with Web services. This application comprises of a middleware layer that runs between the source program and the Web services technologies, and whose interface is the result of the mapping of the operations defined in the model. The evaluation performed to the instantiated model allows us to identify situations in which component migration to the server to interact locally is more advantageous in comparison to remote interacting with it