A Note About the Semantics of Delegation

In many applications, mobile agents are used by a client to delegate a task. This task is usually performed by the agent on behalf of the client, by visiting various service provider's sites distributed over a network. This use of mobile agents raises many interesting security issues concerned with the trust relationships established through delegation mechanisms between client and agent, agent and service provider and client and service provider. In this paper we will explain why the traditional semantics of delegation used by existing access control mechanisms, either centralised or distributed, are generally not satisfactory to prevent and detect deception and why these problems are even more critical when these semantics are used in mobile agent paradigms.Non peer reviewe

A Security Architecute for Mobile Agent Based Creeper

Mobile agents are active objects that can autonomously migrate in a network to perform tasks on behalf of their owners. Though they offer an important new method of performing transactions and information retrieval in networks, mobile agents also raise several security issues related to the protection of host resources as well as the data carried by an agent itself. Mobile agent technology offers a new computing paradigm in which a program, in the form of a software agent, can suspend its execution on a host computer, transfer itself to another agent-enabled host on the network, and resume execution on the new host. Mobile Agent (MA) technology raises significant security concerns and requires a thorough security framework with a wide range of strategies and mechanisms for the protection of both agent platform and mobile agents against possibly malicious reciprocal behavior. The security infrastructure should have the ability to flexibly and dynamically offer different solutions to achieve different qualities of security service depending on application requirements. The protection of mobile agent systems continues to be an active area of research that will enable future applications to utilize this paradigm of computing. Agent systems and mobile applications must balance security requirements with available security mechanisms in order to meet application level security goals.A security solution has been introduced, which protects both the mobile agent itself and the host resources that encrypt the data before passing it to mobile agent and decrypt it on the visited host sides i.e. it transfers the URL to the Mobile Agent System that will pass that encrypted URL to the server where it will be decrypted and used. The methods of Encryption/Decryption used are a Public-key Cipher System and a Symmetric Cipher System that focuses on submitting data to the server securely. The proposed approach solves the problem of malicious host that can harm mobile agent or the information it contain

Behavioral pattern analysis of secure migration and communications in eCommerce using cryptographic protocols on a mobile MAS platform

Mobile Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) systems can be used with real success in a growing number of eCommerce applications nowadays. Security has been identified as numerous times by different researchers as a top criterion for the acceptance of mobile agent adoption. In this paper we present an in-depth analysis of behavior patterns of a mobile MAS platform when using different cryptographic protocols to assure communication and migration integrity and confidentiality. Different use case sceneries of eCommerce applications as well as many other aspects have been studied, such as overhead, different communication patterns, different loads and bandwidth issues. This work is also extensible to other mobile and non-mobile MAS platforms. The results obtained can be used and should be taken into account by designers and implementers of secure mobile and also non-mobile agent platforms and agents.European Union TeleCARE IST-2000-2760

Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Security in Mobile Multiagent Systems

This report contains the Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Security on Security of Mobile Multiagent Systems (SEMAS2002). The Workshop was held in Montreal, Canada as a satellite event to the 5th International Conference on Autonomous Agents in 2001. The far reaching influence of the Internet has resulted in an increased interest in agent technologies, which are poised to play a key role in the implementation of successful Internet and WWW-based applications in the future. While there is still considerable hype concerning agent technologies, there is also an increasing awareness of the problems involved. In particular, that these applications will not be successful unless security issues can be adequately handled. Although there is a large body of work on cryptographic techniques that provide basic building-blocks to solve specific security problems, relatively little work has been done in investigating security in the multiagent system context. Related problems are secure communication between agents, implementation of trust models/authentication procedures or even reflections of agents on security mechanisms. The introduction of mobile software agents significantly increases the risks involved in Internet and WWW-based applications. For example, if we allow agents to enter our hosts or private networks, we must offer the agents a platform so that they can execute correctly but at the same time ensure that they will not have deleterious effects on our hosts or any other agents / processes in our network. If we send out mobile agents, we should also be able to provide guarantees about specific aspects of their behaviour, i.e., we are not only interested in whether the agents carry out-out their intended task correctly. They must defend themselves against attacks initiated by other agents, and survive in potentially malicious environments. Agent technologies can also be used to support network security. For example in the context of intrusion detection, intelligent guardian agents may be used to analyse the behaviour of agents on a firewall or intelligent monitoring agents can be used to analyse the behaviour of agents migrating through a network. Part of the inspiration for such multi-agent systems comes from primitive animal behaviour, such as that of guardian ants protecting their hill or from biological immune systems

Design and Analysis of Smartphone Application Development Methodology

Abstract— The use of modern Smartphone encourages by recent powerful devices such as Apple’s iPhone, Samsung‘s Note, Google’s Android devices etc. In general Smartphone application usage is rapidly growing & expanding throughout the globe. There are need set of emerging guidelines for how to build the new best possible Smartphone applications. Intelligence of mobile has created a wide range of opportunities for researchers, academicians, scientists, engineers, and developers to create the new applications for end users and businesses. Information technology industry enormously concentrates on how to best build smart phone based applications widely. There are various issues in Cutting-edge research and applications development on computational intelligence in mobile environment The mobile-based application development industry is increasingly growing up due to the huge and intensive use of applications in mobile devices; most of them are running on Android based Operating System. As such to develop, analysis and design research model for remotely accessing and control smart phone devices, object oriented strategy is one of the powerful among various traditional software development models. The Various object oriented intelligent development approaches contributes in addressing these issues, as well as discover other potential elements in the mobile paradigm. There are several issues & emerging guidelines that developers follows when building new business or social Smartphone based model.. The combination of mobile computing and computational intelligence focuses on learning model and knowledge generated by mobile users and mobile technology. Mobile technology covers various applications of computational intelligence to mobile paradigm, including intelligence, mobile data, security, mobile agent, location-based mobile information services, intelligent networks, mobile multimedia data access and control

A mobile application based on software agents and mobile web services

Purpose - The aim of the research is to discuss the design and development of a mobile application using two technologies known as software agent (SA) and mobile web services. Design/methodology/approach - The objectives were achieved by testing the integration of SAs and mobile web services into mobile applications. The approach suggested in the paper has relied on some modeling techniques such as service chart diagram and addressed some security issues. Findings - It was found in the course of the work the necessity of being aware of the limitations of mobile devices, despite all the major developments that are happening. In addition, it was found that it is deemed appropriate to provide some modeling techniques which suit the development of mobile applications. Originality/value - The paper discusses the concept of mobile web services. The paper is particularly useful to those who are in the field of mobile computing. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Mobile agent security and reliability issues in electronic commerce.

Chan, Hing-wing.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 76-79).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Abstract --- p.iAbstract (Chinese) --- p.iiAcknowledgements --- p.iiiContents --- p.ivList of Figures --- p.viiList of Tables --- p.viiiChapter Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1. --- Mobile Agents and the Problems --- p.1Chapter 1.2. --- Approach --- p.3Chapter 1.3. --- Contributions --- p.3Chapter 1.4. --- Organization of This Thesis --- p.4Chapter Chapter 2. --- The Mobile Code Paradigm --- p.6Chapter 2.1. --- Mobile Code: an Alternative to Client/Servers --- p.6Chapter 2.1.1. --- Classification of Mobile Codes --- p.8Chapter 2.1.2. --- Applications of Mobile Code Paradigms --- p.10Chapter 2.1.3. --- Supporting Implementation Technologies --- p.11Chapter 2.2. --- The Problems of Mobile Code --- p.13Chapter 2.2.1. --- Security Issues in Distributed Systems --- p.13Chapter 2.2.2. --- Security Concerns of Mobile Code Paradigms --- p.15Chapter 2.2.2.1. --- Security Attacks --- p.15Chapter 2.2.2.2. --- Security Mechanisms --- p.17Chapter 2.2.2.3. --- A Security Comparison between Paradigms --- p.20Chapter 2.2.3. --- Security Features of Implementation Technologies --- p.20Chapter 2.2.3.1. --- Security Services of Message-based Technology --- p.21Chapter 2.2.3.2. --- Security Services of Object-based Technology --- p.21Chapter 2.2.3.3. --- Security Services of Mobile Technology --- p.22Chapter 2.2.3.4. --- A Comparison of Technologies on Security Services --- p.22Chapter 2.3. --- Chapter Summary --- p.23Chapter Chapter 3. --- "Mobile Agents, Its Security and Reliability Issues" --- p.24Chapter 3.1. --- Advantages and Applications of Mobile Agents --- p.24Chapter 3.2. --- Security Concerns of Mobile Agents --- p.26Chapter 3.2.1. --- Host Security --- p.27Chapter 3.2.2. --- Agent Security --- p.27Chapter 3.3. --- Techniques to Protect Mobile Agents --- p.29Chapter 3.3.1. --- Protected Agent States --- p.29Chapter 3.3.2. --- Mobile Cryptography --- p.30Chapter 3.4. --- Reliability Concerns of Mobile Agents --- p.31Chapter Chapter 4. --- Security and Reliability Modeling for Mobile Agents --- p.32Chapter 4.1. --- Attack Model and Scenarios --- p.33Chapter 4.2. --- General Security Models --- p.34Chapter 4.2.1. --- Security and Reliability --- p.34Chapter 4.2.2. --- Deriving Security Models --- p.36Chapter 4.2.3. --- The Time-to-Effort Function --- p.38Chapter 4.3. --- A Security Model for Mobile Agents --- p.40Chapter 4.4. --- Discussion of the Proposed Model --- p.43Chapter 4.5. --- A Reliability Model for Mobile Agents --- p.43Chapter Chapter 5. --- The Concordia Mobile Agent Platform --- p.46Chapter 5.1. --- Overview --- p.46Chapter 5.2. --- Special Features --- p.47Chapter Chapter 6. --- SIAS: A Shopping Information Agent System --- p.49Chapter 6.1. --- What the System Does --- p.49Chapter 6.2. --- System Design --- p.50Chapter 6.2.1. --- Object Description --- p.50Chapter 6.2.2. --- Flow Description --- p.52Chapter 6.3. --- Implementation --- p.53Chapter 6.3.1. --- Choice of Programming Language --- p.53Chapter 6.3.2. --- Choice of Mobile Agent Platform --- p.53Chapter 6.3.3. --- Other Implementation Details --- p.54Chapter 6.4. --- Snapshots --- p.54Chapter 6.5. --- Security Design of SIAS --- p.57Chapter 6.5.1. --- Security Problems of SIAS --- p.58Chapter 6.5.2. --- Our Solutions to the Problems --- p.60Chapter 6.5.3. --- Evaluation of the Secure SIAS --- p.64Chapter 6.5.3.1. --- Security Analysis --- p.64Chapter 6.5.3.2. --- Performance Vs Query Size --- p.65Chapter 6.5.3.3. --- Performance Vs Number of Hosts --- p.67Chapter 6.6. --- Reliability Design of SIAS --- p.69Chapter 6.6.1. --- Reliability Problems of SIAS --- p.69Chapter 6.6.2. --- Our Solutions to the Problems --- p.70Chapter 6.6.3. --- Evaluation of the Reliable SIAS --- p.71Chapter Chapter 7. --- Conclusions and Future Work --- p.73Bibliography --- p.7

A cooperative cellular and broadcast conditional access system for Pay-TV systems

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2009 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.The lack of interoperability between Pay-TV service providers and a horizontally integrated business transaction model have compromised the competition in the Pay-TV market. In addition, the lack of interactivity with customers has resulted in high churn rate and improper security measures have contributed into considerable business loss. These issues are the main cause of high operational costs and subscription fees in the Pay-TV systems. As a result, this paper presents the Mobile Conditional Access System (MICAS) as an end-to-end access control solution for Pay-TV systems. It incorporates the mobile and broadcasting systems and provides a platform whereby service providers can effectively interact with their customers, personalize their services and adopt appropriate security measurements. This would result in the decrease of operating expenses and increase of customers' satisfaction in the system. The paper provides an overview of state-of-the-art conditional access solutions followed by detailed description of design, reference model implementation and analysis of possible MICAS security architectures.Strategy & Technology (S&T) Lt