Mobile Agent Security

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. The use of mobile code has a long history dating back to the use of remote job entry systems in the 1960's. Today's agent incarnations can be characterized in a number of ways ranging from simple distributed objects to highly organized software with embedded intelligence. As the sophistication of mobile software has increased over time, so too have the associated threats to security. This report provides an overview of the range of threats facing the designers of agent platforms and the developers of agent-based applications. The report also identifies generic security objectives, and a range of measures for countering the identified threats and fulfilling these security objectives.