SAFE: Secure-Roaming Agents for E-commerce

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

Sistemas multi-agentes aplicados a proteção adaptativa de linhas de transmissão com três terminais

Este artigo discute o uso de agentes para a adaptação de ajustes de relés de distância para linhas com três terminais. Agentes são processos baseados em softwares capazes de buscar informações em redes de comunicação, interagindo com equipamentos e realizando tarefas em seu favor (neste caso os próprios relés). Resultados ilustrando o desempenho do método adaptativo proposto, e os comparando com métodos convencionais, são apresentados. É mostrado que os relés digitais em conjunto com sistemas agentes, agindo dentro de um sistema de comunicação, podem alterar os ajustes adaptativos e assim assegurar o correto funcionamento do sistema de proteção sobre uma larga variedade de condições de operação. O esquema proposto para proteção adaptativa também pode ser utilizado para a transferência de abertura de disjuntor através da rede dedicada para proteção de primeira zona ao longo da extensão total da linha.This paper discusses the adaptation of the settings of distance relays for three-terminal lines employing agents. Agents are software processes capable of searching for information in networks, interacting with pieces of equipment and performing tasks on behalf of their owners (relays). Results illustrating the performance of the adaptive method proposed, compared to conventional fixed settings, are presented. It is shown that the digital relays and agents acting within a communication structure can alter adaptive settings to ensure correct performance over a wide variety of operation conditions. The proposed relaying scheme can also be utilized for transferring the trip of the first zone, clearing over the entire line

An Improved Itinerary Recording Protocol for Securing Distributed Architectures Based on Mobile Agents

This paper proposes an improved itinerary recording protocol for securing distributed architectures based on mobile agents. The behavior of each of the cooperating agents is described, as well as the decision process establishing the identities of offenders when an attack is detected. Our protocol is tested on a set of potential attacks and the results confirm our assumption regarding offender designations and moments of detection. More precisely, the performance evaluation shows that our protocol detects the attack where there is collaboration between a platform on the cooperating agents' itinerary and another on the mobile agent's itinerary. As a result, this protocol constitutes a suitable option for electronic commerce applications where security concerns prevail over cost factors

D’Agents: Security in a Multiple-Language, Mobile-Agent System

Abstract. Mobile-agent systems must address three security issues: protecting an individual machine, protecting a group of machines, and protecting an agent. In this chapter, we discuss these three issues in the context of D’Agents, a mobile-agent system whose agents can be written in Tcl, Java and Scheme. (D’Agents was formerly known as Agent Tcl.) First we discuss mechanisms existing in D’Agents for protecting an individual machine: (1) cryptographic authentication of the agent’s owner, (2) resource managers that make policy decisions based on the owner’s identity, and (3) secure execution environments for each language that enforce the decisions of the resource managers. Then we discuss our planned market-based approach for protecting machine groups. Finally we consider several (partial) solutions for protecting an agent from a malicious machine.

System mechanisms for partial rollback of mobile agent execution

Mobile agent technology has been proposed for various fault-sensitive application areas, including electronic commerce, systems management and active messaging. Recently proposed protocols providing the exactly-once execution of mobile agents allow the usage of mobile agents in these application areas. Based on these protocols, a mechanism for the application-initiated partial rollback of the agent execution is presented in this paper. The rollback mechanism uses compensating operations to roll back the effects of the agent execution on the resources and uses a mixture of physical logging and compensating operations to rollback the state of the agent. The introduction of different types of compensating operations and the integration of an itinerary concept with the rollback mechanism allows performance improvements during the agent rollback as well as during the normal agent execution

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

Securing mobile agent in hostile environment.

by Mo Chun Man.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-80).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Chapter 1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- The Mobile Agents --- p.2Chapter 1.2 --- The Mobile Agent Paradigm --- p.4Chapter 1.2.1 --- Initiatives --- p.5Chapter 1.2.2 --- Applications --- p.7Chapter 1.3 --- The Mobile Agent S ystem --- p.8Chapter 1.4 --- Security in Mobile Agent System --- p.9Chapter 1.5 --- Thesis Organization --- p.11Chapter 2 --- BACKGROUND AND FOUNDATIONS --- p.12Chapter 2.1 --- Encryption/Decryption --- p.12Chapter 2.2 --- One-way Hash Function --- p.13Chapter 2.3 --- Message Authentication Code (MAC) --- p.13Chapter 2.4 --- Homomorphic Encryption Scheme --- p.14Chapter 2.5 --- One-Round Oblivious Transfer --- p.14Chapter 2.6 --- Polynomial-time Algorithms --- p.14Chapter 2.7 --- Circuit --- p.15Chapter 3 --- SURVEY OF PROTECTION SCHEMES ON MOBILE AGENTS --- p.16Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.16Chapter 3.2 --- Detection Approaches --- p.17Chapter 3.2.1 --- Execution Traces --- p.17Chapter 3.2.2 --- Partial Result Encapsulation --- p.18Chapter 3.2.3 --- State Appraisal --- p.20Chapter 3.3 --- Prevention Approaches --- p.20Chapter 3.3.1 --- Sliding Encryption --- p.20Chapter 3.3.2 --- Tamper-resistant Hardware --- p.21Chapter 3.3.3 --- Multi-agent Cooperation --- p.22Chapter 3.3.4 --- Code Obfuscation --- p.23Chapter 3.3.5 --- Intention Spreading and Shrinking --- p.26Chapter 3.3.6 --- Encrypted Function Evaluation --- p.26Chapter 3.3.7 --- Black Box Test Prevention --- p.27Chapter 3.4 --- Chapter Summary --- p.29Chapter 4 --- TAXONOMY OF ATTACKS --- p.30Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.30Chapter 4.2 --- Whatis attack? --- p.31Chapter 4.3 --- How can attacks be done? --- p.32Chapter 4.4 --- Taxonomy of Attacks --- p.33Chapter 4.4.1 --- Purposeful Attack --- p.33Chapter 4.4.2 --- Frivolous Attack --- p.36Chapter 4.4.3 --- The Full Taxonomy --- p.38Chapter 4.5 --- Using the Taxonomy --- p.38Chapter 4.5.1 --- Match to Existing Protection Schemes --- p.38Chapter 4.5.2 --- Insight to Potential Protection Schemes --- p.41Chapter 4.6 --- Chapter Summary --- p.42Chapter 5 --- PROTECTION FOR REACTIVE MOBILE AGENTS --- p.43Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.43Chapter 5.2 --- The Model --- p.45Chapter 5.2.1 --- The Non-reactive and Reactive Mobile Agent Model --- p.45Chapter 5.2.2 --- The Computation Flow --- p.47Chapter 5.2.3 --- An Example --- p.49Chapter 5.3 --- tools --- p.51Chapter 5.3.1 --- Encrypted Circuit Construction --- p.51Chapter 5.3.2 --- Circuit Cascading --- p.53Chapter 5.4 --- Proposed Protection Scheme --- p.54Chapter 5.4.1 --- Two-hop Protocol --- p.55Chapter 5.4.2 --- Multi-hop Protocol --- p.60Chapter 5.5 --- Security Analysis --- p.60Chapter 5.5.1 --- Security under Purposeful Attacks --- p.61Chapter 5.5.2 --- Security under Frivolous Attacks --- p.62Chapter 5.6 --- Improvements --- p.62Chapter 5.6.1 --- Basic Idea --- p.63Chapter 5.6.2 --- Input Retrieval Protocol --- p.63Chapter 5.6.3 --- Combating Frivolous Attacks --- p.65Chapter 5.7 --- Further Considerations --- p.66Chapter 5.8 --- Chapter Summary --- p.67Chapter 6 --- CONCLUSIONS --- p.68APPENDIX --- p.71BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.7

Secure agent transport and integrity protection

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN