Security for Mobile Agents: Issues and Requirements

William M. Farmer, Joshua D. Guttman, Vipin Swarup

1996

Abstract

Mobile agents are processes which can autonomously migrate to new
hosts. Despite its many practical benefits, mobile agent technology
results in significant new security threats from malicious agents and
hosts.  The primary added complication is that, as an agent traverses
multiple hosts that are trusted to different degrees, its state can
change in ways that adversely impact its functionality.  In this
paper, we investigate these new threats and develop a set of
achievable security requirements for mobile agent systems.