Towards a security solution for mobile agents

Abstract

The current distributed systems are mainly based on the client - server model. The growing use of the Internet and the development of information and communication technologies has yielded more needs in terms of performance, reliability and security of information. By its synchronous nature, the client - server model no longer seems able to meet these new demands. Several new approaches have been proposed, for example the mobility of the code, involving the emergence of the mobile agents' paradigm (MA). This paradigm certainly holds great promise, though questions of security arise. In this paper, we propose an extension of the MA model called Seller - Buyer model (SB). This extension is made by making the server component mobile and using market mechanisms between the client agent (the buyer) and the server agent (the seller). While most of works in the area propose asymmetric security solutions, the SB model proposes a symmetric security approach for the MA. The SB model will give the developers a way to use, safely and efficiently, MA to build distributed applications on large-scale networks such as the Internet. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.