A security based mobile agent system

Mobile agent systems have a multitude of applications in areas such as network management systems, transactions, information search and retrieval, data sharing and collaboration in a variety of different application domains. Simply put, agents are software components platforms that travel among platforms to complete a series of tasks, and a platform is an environment that allows the agent to execute and complete those tasks. In such a system, both the agent and platform integrity must be maintained, confidentiality between agents and the intended platform parties must be preserved, and accountability of agents and their platform counterparts must be stringent. In current work, mobile agent systems are developed from several platforms, which do not readily incorporate customizable and protective security measures, and are not easily interoperable with other solutions. We have developed a new framework SMASH, Secure Modular Mobile Agent System.H, an agent system designed to use modular components that allow agents to be easily constructed and the system to be easily extended, while incorporating security into its design.