Methods for protecting a mobile agent’s route

Abstract

In the world of mobile agents, security aspects are extensively being discussed, with strong emphasis on how agents can be protected against malicious hosts and vice versa. This paper discusses methods for protecting an agent's route information from being misused by sites en route interested in gaining insight into the profile of the agent’s owner or in obstructing the owner's original goal. Our methods provide visited sites with just a minimum of route information, but on the other hand allow sites to detect modifying attacks of preceding sites. Though, under noncolluding attacks, all methodes presented provide a similar level of protection, they differ w.r.t. performance and the points of time when an attack can be detected.